A Hell of a Town
by GothicCheshire
Summary: When life begins to look like death, why would you continue to fight to live?
1. Where are We?

Five men stood in the middle of a desolate broken town. The sky was dark, the buildings in a state of disrepair and the streets empty of any and all life. Snow fell from the sky in large fat flakes that melted on impact with the street, only a light dusting covering the ground in contrast to the quantity that fell.

One of the men stood a little taller than the others, his breath erupting in billows from his mouth as he waved a device around in front of him, scanning the surroundings with dark eyes that matched his black hair. He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt and was the only one possessing pointed ears and upswept eyebrows. A half-Vulcan named Spock, Chief Science Officer and First Officer of the starship _Enterprise_.

Another blue shirted man was Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, his hazel eyes scanning everything with a harsh and intelligent gaze. He ran a hand through his brown hair before crossing his arms in front of his chest. He was tapping his black-booted foot impatiently.

"Dammit, Jim, are you sure we have the right coordinates?" His harsh southern drawl broke the silence and caused the two security officers in red shirts to flinch, their holds on their phasers adjusting slightly. The air around them held a feeling of disquiet that couldn't be shaken. A blonde-haired and blue-eyed young man with a golden shirt turned to him with a wide cocky grin.

"Yep, this is it," James Tiberius Kirk stated. Bones sighed, looking over to the half-Vulcan who was adjusting his tricorder in brisk movements that would be translated into increased agitation in a human.

"It is as the Captain said, Doctor; these are the correct coordinates." His flat monotone voice made McCoy grumble, before he finally burst out with,

"Look, I'll admit this town looks like the perfect place for a distress call to come from; whole thing sure feels eerie enough, but this place is deserted. And I don't think they had enough technology to be able to make a distress call to a passing starship anyway. I mean look at this place! It's like Earth in the early 21st century; we sure as hell weren't contacting ships then."

"Be that as it may, Doctor, they seem to have enough technology to render the tricorders useless." Spock gave up his fiddling and released it to hang by its strap on his shoulder.

"You can't get a reading, Spock?" Jim walked over to him carefully, picking his way through the cracked cement that spiderwebbed around them.

"Affirmative, Captain, all sensors are nonoperational. We have no way of knowing what is here aside from the traditional method of looking."

"Well then, I suppose we best get to that now then."

"Look, I have no problem with looking, but what about communicators; can we contact the ship?" He turned his gaze over to see that Spock was already fiddling with them.

Spock put it back, a slight tension in his eyes betraying his unease while the rest of his expression remained flat. "They're not working either, Spock?"

"Affirmative."

"Well, this day gets better and better; what's next, fire falling from the sky?"

"I highly doubt that is likely, Doctor, considering it seems to be snowing."

"Shut up, Spock."

Jim snorted, his eyes flowing over his surroundings. He locked eyes with a small figure at the end of the street, its body crouched and its hair long. Doing what came naturally to him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "Hey!" The figure stood and ran, disappearing into the thick flurry of snow that enveloped everything, the state of constant darkness hindering any attempt to see where it went.

"Well, that was helpful."

"Did you see something?"

"It's gone now. Alright, let's get moving, shall we?" That said he cracked his knuckles and started off in the direction of the nearest building, the group trailing after him. They entered it, the name of the building smudged out beyond legibility, and their pace changed accordingly.

The building was dark; the things that they could see were in a state of disrepair and the paint peeling. Jim began examining everything, paying particular attention to an especially curved dummy wearing a skintight dress. Spock, however, was looking around quietly, his expression focused. A second later a beam of light erupted from the flashlight he held in his hands, landing directly on the map on the desk.

He picked it up and walked back over to the Captain, placing it on the desk in front of him. "Good work, Spock!" Jim said grinning. "So, where are we?"

Spock examined the many winding roads and finally indicated a narrow street. "Here."

"Well that's just peachy," McCoy grumbled, and slowly examined the whole of the map. "Silent Hill." He indicated the town name and pulled a face.

"Well, they got the silent part right. There's nothing here. No birds, no animals, no people…" Ensign Mathews, one of the red-headed security officers, stated, his green eyes flicking around to the dark corners not illuminated by the flashlight.

"Where should we be headed?"

Spock examined the map with a critical-eyed gaze. "Here." He indicated the map and the large Town Hall. "If there is a reason for the people to meet or evacuate, they would head to the largest building in the town in order to group. If they have sent for help they would also likely wait there."

"Well then, looks like we're heading to Town Hall. Let's get moving."

They exited the building together, beginning their quest. They made it to the crossroad, before Spock tensed sniffing the air quietly as his sharp eyes fell to the ground in front of them.

"What is it?" Jim asked softly, watching as his First Officer crouched, his brown eyes trained to the cracked and snow-dusted pavement.

"Blood."

It was like the word was a trigger. They felt the ground shake, the temperature plummeting to below freezing, the snow turning from a flurry to a blizzard, the ground turning to ice and the lampposts and storefronts freezing over. They tensed with cold, Spock reeling slightly with the sudden change in temperature, staring around in shock, the shock turning into terror as the noises started.

Choked moans, sounds of pain, screams and yells erupted from every point and a sudden burst of static from the communicators caused an instantaneous reaction. Every member of the team pulled out phasers, moving into a back-to-back formation. Spock was beginning to shiver violently from where he stood pressed up to Jim's back, a sign of the sudden extreme cold, not fear.

"What the hell is goin' on?" Leonard shouted to be heard over the swirl of ice and snow.

They didn't get a chance to answer. Directly in front of them a sudden burst of movement drew their attention. A skinny, decrepit, and rotten-looking creature launched itself at them with a gargling scream. They fired.

Beams of light met the creature head on, but it didn't slow. Spock set his to kill in a flicker of movement and shot it directly in front of him. It fell to the ground still reaching out for him. But they did not get a decent chance to look at it; suddenly the things erupted out of every frozen store front, ice shattering like glass, their long arms clawing at each other and their mouths stretching in wails and screams as they fought to get to them.

The sudden burst of static shifted, turning to a high-pitched whine that caused Spock to crumble to the ground, the combination of cold and pain too much. But the voice that sounded from the communicator was the thing that caught Bones' attention. "Daddy! Daddy, you can't fight them, run, Daddy, run!"

Bones jerked, looking at his communicator in horror. "Joanna?" he asked softly, before noticing Spock, he dropped next to the half-Vulcan as Jim and the two security officers formed a protective circle around the two, the half-Vulcan's hands and lips turning a shade of pale blue that was unhealthy on any human, let alone a Vulcan from a desert planet. The three around them fired shots into the swarm, but the three men were soon overwhelmed, and the security officers threw Jim behind them and down as they shot.

The horde swarmed the two security officers, dragging them away from the three on the ground as they screamed, their nails digging into the pavement and snapping, lines of blood streaking the concrete, even as the three left looked on in horror. Spock's body shivered constantly as Jim and Bones began shooting into the creatures left, the constant stream broken only by a small pause between creatures. Finally the phasers they were left with sputtered and died, the charges gone.

The two of them looked on in horror as the bloody, mangled, corpselike beings launched themselves at them in one last effort, before they froze. The ice melted, the beings melting into the ground with it, mangled bloodless sockets staring into their eyes until the last moment.

They panted, their breaths coming in harsh gasps, their hearts racing, and their eyes focused on the world around them in terror.

Spock's teeth were chattering, his mind and body in pain as the tremors became more violent.

"Dammit… What the heck was that?" Bones swore even as he began seeing to him, injecting him with adrenaline and various other things to bring his temperature up to normal. Covering his hands with cloth, he grabbed the half-Vulcan's blue ones and rubbed them frantically, trying to restore blood flow, understanding the fact that those were the places that would be in the most pain.

Spock pushed them both off. "Leave me…should that happen again I will be unable to help…it is illogical to waste resources you will not get back." His voice was hoarse, and he pulled back.

"We won't leave you here, you idiot; now hold still; the less crap you give me to deal with the better off we'll both be. Now what the fuck were those things?" Bones snatched his hands again, rubbing until the blue tint vanished.

"They just came out of nowhere, and what the hell was with that ice show, Bones? What the hell?"

"It is impossible to speculate," Spock finally forced out, sitting slowly upright.

"What are we going to do?"

"There's nothing to do. The people here are dead. They have to be…"

The sound of boots crunching through snow drew their attention suddenly. They turned, looking back at the tall yet slim approaching woman. Her hair was cropped short and blonde under her hat, her face holding an expression of wary apprehension and her fingers grasping a crude weapon that they recognized as a gun. As soon as she saw they were hurt and unarmed the gun was returned to its holster and she rushed forward, her face filled with caution. She was dressed in a close-fitting police uniform for snowy weather, and Jim noticed the fact that her…assets bounced with every step she took. She finally fell down in front of them on her knees, looking at them closely, pausing on Spock. "What are you guys doing out here? Don't you know it's not safe?" she cried out finally.

"We're figuring that out; who are you; what's going on; what WERE those things?" Bones snapped, gesturing blindly.

"I'm Officer Mandy Walters; we're evacuating the town; but what do you mean about 'things'? What things?"

They froze, looking at her directly. "What do you mean 'what things'? Those things that attacked us, after all that snow, that ice?"

Mandy looked at them closely. "There's nothing out here; everyone's been moved into the Town Hall because of the blizzard that's coming. It's a big one, the biggest we've had in years. You shouldn't be out dressed like that." She gestured to their clothes and their loose, airy make. "Especially not you." She nodded to the Vulcan, and reached out to help them up. "Come on, I'll get you some clothes; you're all Starfleet, right?"

"That is correct."

"It's about time. We've been trying to contact you guys for months and finally got a communicator that works."

"What do you mean?"

"If you haven't noticed yet, our technology has all been malfunctioning. Communicators, tricorders, any and all sensors are nonoperational. We've had to revert back to some pretty primitive methods," she explained, bringing them to another decrepit building. They entered and found it to be the police station. "I'm on the lookout for any other people that haven't gotten to the Town Hall yet, but I have time to get you some clothes."

She gestured to a pile of snowy weather gear, hats, gloves, and more of those close-fitting thermal suits. She moved Spock to another pile. "These are heavy duty; you'll appreciate these more, I think."

That said they took to clothing themselves in it, removing their boots and pulling the other things on over their clothes before re-lacing the boots and tucking the pants around them. They were made insulated and heavy duty; there was no reason to replace them.

As soon as they were dressed with all the accessories, they were examined closely by the woman, having whatever bare skin they had covered by expert hands used to insulating against the cold that came. When she was satisfied she waved them out, telling Spock to keep the flashlight on him at all times, as the town was prone to blackouts.

"Some of the roads are blocked, but if you go through the apartment block here," she indicated it, "and the hospital here," she indicated the correct building, "you'll make it through."

That decided they began walking. As they passed their last location, they could almost forget what had happened there, if not for the streaks of blood and the memory of screaming.


	2. Horrors

Spock, Bones and Jim pressed close together, the feeling of dread increasing with every step they took into the dark town. The streetlights illuminated their path with small pools of light, the ground cracked and frozen. Their boots were heavily prepared for traction, spikes around the edges that they had added to keep movement fast, even on ice. They hadn't forgotten those things. They were positive that it was only a matter of time before they came.

Spock checked the map quietly, and pointed them down a narrow street. They walked carefully, picking their way through the pavement and ice. They got to the end and blinked. "Dead end…" Jim said softly, looking up at the concrete wall that blocked their path. Bones swore.

"Are you sure you're reading that map right, you pointy-eared bastard?"

Spock straightened, looking over to him and narrowing his eyes, finally brandishing the map at him and indicating where the apartment was and the fact that the street they were currently standing on would have been the best way. "There is no indication of a block, Doctor. I assure you…" His voice tapered off when static began coming from their communicators, and their eyes widened.

"Run."

The winds grew, snow coming down hard and the streets turning to ice. They turned, running out of the dead end, the sounds of torment and agony growing as the storefronts froze over and the snow blew into their faces, their only means of sight the clear goggles that protected their eyes and the beam of light shining from the flashlight held steady in Spock's hand. They burst into the main street just as the beings began beating on the ice to break through; this time there were shorter, long-haired scraggly things among the tall dead and twiglike ones. But beyond the screaming and calls of torment there was something else, something Spock's ears could barely make out. The static turned to the screaming high pitch they had heard before and a voice called out, "Run, run, you can't fight them; Daddy you have to run!"

Joanna McCoy's voice rang from the communicators, the doctor moving to stop, only to be grabbed by Jim and pulled along. "Run, just run!"

The ice shattered, the beings jumping out and screaming at them, and so began a chase. A desperate attempt to escape, the things chasing after them, their cries and shouts echoing behind them as they ran, always heading to the wider streets, their lack of knowledge of which roads would be blocked making them avoid other narrow side streets. They didn't want to be trapped with them. Spock was faltering slightly, the cold seeping into his bones, and soft whispers drawing his attention from his path.

They came to a fence, Spock coming into position to boost the other two up, he locked his hands into a stirrup and Jim brought a foot up; just barely standing on it before Spock launched him over the top. Bones followed him over, and Spock forced his fingers through the holes and began pulling himself up the fence.

Jim and Bones let out a shout just as Spock felt cold, bone thin hands grabbing him. He was pulled off the fence, and into the midst of them. He rolled backwards and kept rolling, stopping in a crouch when he was out of the scratching and scrabbling fingers and threw himself into motion, running along the edge of the fence. McCoy and Kirk ran along the other side, shouting at him to hurry, they were right behind him.

He made the mistake of looking behind him once, and the sight of the tall spindly decrepit things shoving the short, rotted and malnourished beings out of the way, tearing heads from shoulders and their jaws hanging made his heart skip. He ran faster, the beam of light from his flashlight swinging wildly. He kept the flashlight on; he knew that the captain and the doctor would lose sight of him if he didn't and he had a feeling that the creatures chasing him were attracted to light. He couldn't let them go after the Doctor or the Captain.

Spock didn't see the pothole until it was too late.

He tripped, the flashlight skittering forward along the ground, out of his hands, and the shouts from the doctor and the captain ringing in his ears. He felt the first one grab his ankle and pull, and he made one last desperate launch forward and grasped the flashlight. They dragged him back and he came swinging, his first connection sending the head off of one of them.

The flashlight was pulled from his hands and the one closest reached for his face, its fingers in a meld position. He jerked his head back and another found its way into position.

His mind was dragged into darkness and pain and fear, sounds of desolation and agony, feelings of terror and despair sinking into his very bone marrow. It felt like it would never end, the outpourings something like the death throes of a world, his pain increasing into a shearing split through his skull. He felt his mind buckle under the weight of the assault…

Then suddenly, it was gone. Awareness came slowly, and when it did he almost wished it hadn't. Pain split through his skull, throbbing in his temples, his throat was thick and felt like sandpaper, and he had several minor tears into the first layer of his clothing. Jim and Bones were leaning over him, screaming his name, their faces frantic and worried when he just stared at them. When they saw that he was registering them, they let go of him.

"Spock…oh God, Spock…"

"We cannot stay here…" Spock was amazed at how hoarse his voice was, his breath coming in gasps. "They will not stop…we must keep moving…we must get to the Town Hall."

"Alright, hobgoblin, alright, let's get you on your feet first…" McCoy said softly, reaching out and hooking Spock's arm over his shoulders. He hefted him up, realizing as he did so why Spock had acted as the one to lift them, he was _heavy_; Vulcan muscle and bone density far greater than a human's. He grunted and Jim helped; between the two of them Spock got to his feet.

Spock took a breath and straightened fully; he took a silent step forward and gained his balance.

"Are you okay?"

"I will be fine. Now we must move; where is the flashlight?"

"Right here," Jim stated with a smile, handing it over. Spock turned it on and brought the map out of a pocket, spreading it on the ground.

"Where are we…" Jim asked softly, looking around to find their location on the parchment.

"Find a street sign, any identifiable landmark…" Spock said, crouching over the map as he did so, attempting to run through the frantic chase in his mind. He couldn't do it.

Bones looked around, spotting a building as he did so. He narrowed his eyes, looking it over, examining the multiple cracked and filthy windows, the tattered remains of a flag pole and the wide double doors hanging at an angle. "We're next to a school building… Something like…Birch?"

Spock nodded, looking the map over quietly and finally indicating where they were. "Here…Milton St. We want to be here…" he said quietly, indicating a street a block over and the apartment building that they needed to make it to.

"Alright…let's get moving." Jim said softly.

They walked quietly, the feeling of dread creeping over them. But Jim and McCoy were too happy that Spock was still walking to worry, and that was likely why they didn't notice the fact that Spock's eyes were constantly shifting to various windows, his ears full of soft whispers.

"McCoy…is your daughter on this planet?" Spock asked after a long moment of silence.

"No. She's on Earth, with my ex-wife… I don't know why I keep hearing her. Why can I hear her? Where the hell are we?"

"Hell actually comes to mind," Jim said quietly. Spock didn't say a word, and that worried the both of them more than anything else. "Why did they target us?"

"There is no way to answer that with the current information we possess," Spock said softly.

They walked in silence, their hearts in their throats; the feeling of dread and unease never left, the dark and cloying atmosphere sticking in their chests. Constant whispering filtered into Spock's mind and ears and compounded everything.

Jim watched the constant falling snow, his eyes flicking from side to side, watching the buildings and the constant darkness, the lack of people, and grew slowly and steadily uneasy. Kirk cleared his throat and slowly tugged his coat in closer to himself, memories and images of a different snowy planet floating through his mind. He noticed Spock's attention on him and gave a small yet winning smile. "It's freaky out here, even when those things aren't chasing us."

"There is a certain measure of disquiet in the air."

"Are you admitting to having a feeling, Spock?" Leonard asked with a smirk.

Spock looked at him, his eyebrow raised and quietly stated, "It would be illogical to deny otherwise, Doctor. This place is…disquieting, with or without those beings."

"I'll give you that, hobgoblin, I'll give you that," he said softly. His eyes trailed over to Jim, noting the way the blue eyes shifted behind the clear goggles; his fingers clutched at his coat and he was hunching slightly. "Jim? What's wrong Jim?"

Kirk froze, looking over to McCoy and giving a brief smile. "It's like you said, Bones. This place is…disquieting."

Leonard looked him over, sharp hazel eyes examining him critically. "Disquieting or not, at the moment we're safe."

"At the moment," Jim repeated quietly. He shifted his gaze everywhere, landing on storefront after storefront, and then looked lower. He blinked, staring into the alleyway between two buildings.

A small hunched-over figure was huddled there.

Freezing mid step, Jim gestured for Spock to point the flashlight in the alleyway. The half-Vulcan covered the light with his hand, the glove making it black, before he pointed it at the alley and let go.

Static immediately pierced their ears. Jim gagged, backing up in horror, Bones eyes widened as he examined the thing before him and Spock tensed, slowly backing away.

The figure stretched out, wide black bleeding eyes in a pale skeleton thin face staring at them, its body thin and as white as the snow around it, its belly bloated from malnutrition. Its mouth opened and it let out a wail, mixed with what sounded like words to Jim's ears, a constant litany of, "Why? Why didn't you save us, you were supposed to save us, we trusted you! You killed us, you killed us! It was YOU!" It continued as it shuffled closer, its every step a bloody footprint in the white snow, red liquid trickling constantly from frostbitten fingers and toes.

Jim fell to his knees, even as the other two backed up, Bones' face awash with horror and Spock's eyes narrowed. What had been one small form turned to several, their constant wailing mantra echoing in the night as Jim wrapped his arms around himself. "I'm sorry…I'm sorry; I tried… I tried…"

Spock reached forward, grabbing the traumatized man by his shoulder and pulling him backwards. His eyes never left the approaching figures as their shouts turned more descriptive, their accusations harsher, their words becoming grating and dark.

"Jim…Jim, you cannot let them control you. They are only shadows, but they can hurt you; come!" He pulled his captain away, and they ran and ran and ran, their only goal to get to the apartment building. They reached the gate and tried it, shaking the chain link fence.

It was locked, and it was too high to climb. They looked behind them, their eyes meeting the constant stream of creatures, their wails echoing in their ears, and pressed their backs to the gate. "What do we do?" Jim asked softly. The static turned to a scream,

"The key, Daddy; grab the key!" They heard it, their eyes immediately looking around, Spock shining the light on the ground, and then they saw it - a man dressed like Jim propped on the fence, his hand clutched around a shiny metal object. Bones was closest and pried it from the bone cold fingers, tossing it to Spock who slammed it into the keyhole and turned it, shoving the gate open. They hurried through, locking the gate behind them.

They backed away slowly, eyes focused on the advancing figures. Watching the way they reached out, their fingers grasping at the gate and the constant crying and wailing echoing, even as they melted to the ground, the hollow black eyes constantly trained on them. Then they were gone, nothing even suggesting they had been there. Jim's heavy breathing turned to a cackling half hysterical laugh, and Bones grabbed his shoulders, "Jim…they're gone. Whatever they are they're gone, you're fine, everyone's fine."

"No, everyone is NOT fine, Bones…"

"What did you hear Jim?" Spock asked softly. Bones blinked, looking over to Spock and then over to Jim.

"I heard… " He coughed, "They all blamed me."

"Blamed you for what, Jim?"

Jim shook his head, refusing to talk, and Spock touched his shoulder gently before drawing back. But it had done what he wanted it to, Jim was focused on him.

"It was not your fault, Jim."

"What makes you so sure?"

Spock stared at him quietly. "I heard them as well. You are not to blame."

Jim stared into the brown eyes, his face still tearstained, and slowly a small smile curled up the corner of his mouth. "Nothing gets by your ears, does it?"

"Rarely, if ever," Spock stated with a simple nod of his head.

Jim smiled at him and looked to the building, taking a breath and staring up at the dark windows and the dark looming presence of the shadows. "Well…let's go."

"I'm not going to like this am I?"

"It is likely that none of us will."

"Guys…why do you think that thing was dressed like me?" Silence answered him, and he shifted slightly his eyes locked on the door.

With a slow deep breath Jim opened it, the smell of dust and grime filtering out to them and filling their nostrils. "This is going to suck. I can tell."


	3. Terror

The apartment was dark, musty and acrid. The red carpet under their feet was worn and faded; the wallpaper had at one point been bright but had now faded to a musty yellow, peeling away from the walls. The whole place felt deserted. Jim was positive that they were the first ones to set foot in the building in years. That woman's story was beginning to have some major gaps.

Spock shone the flashlight around carefully, making sure to illuminate everything at least once and give the two humans a good view of what was around. His own night vision was above a human's level, but his practical nature made sure they were always focused on things they needed. The beam alighted on a map and they walked forward carefully, examining it critically.

Spock's finger trailed a path along the hallways, before Bones ripped it off. Spock gave him a look and Leonard rolled his eyes. "Who do you think is going to care? There's no one around. So, where do we need to go?"

Spock took it from his hands and trailed his finger along the original path he had made. "Along here. The exit to the back is here." He indicated it quietly.

"Well…let's go."

They moved to the door to the courtyard, beside a creaky, worn looking stairwell. Spock reached out, trying the handle. It was locked tight. Bones gave a soft curse, but then looked to Spock. "Can you break it open?"

Spock backed up a bit and examined it closely. They were shocked when he finally shook his head 'no'.

"What? Why the hell not?"

"Do you see the way this door is made, Doctor? These hinges here," he indicated them, "are made with a combination of titanium steel and a metal alloy that has been classified as unbreakable. The door itself…" he rapped on it and they were shocked when they heard the clang of metal, "is made of the same, just painted to resemble wood. This door, Doctor, is made for one of two purposes - either to stop something getting in, or to stop something getting out. If it is due to the former…"

"Crap."

"Indeed."

They looked at each other. "We need to get out; is there a way we can go around?"

"We should have tried that first…"

Spock looked at the door to the outside quietly; ever since he entered here there had been no whispering. He was not sure he could take the constant stream of words. But he would have to.

They shoved their way into the cold snow, looking around at the dark chain link fences and slowly moving around it. They tried the other door to the apartment and found it locked; McCoy grumbled quietly. But when they tried going around the building to the back end they found the gate was blocked, and the street beside and behind it was blocked by an impenetrable wall of concrete. The same thing happened on the other side, and they realized that the front doors were made of the exact same material.

There was no other choice. They had to go through.

They returned into the apartment, Spock moving to the desk, looking through the key holders, hoping to find something. Nothing but dust; there were no cobwebs, no signs of any life. "What kind of abandoned place is complete without cobwebs?" Bones asked softly. They gave up finding anything to get them out on this level and turned away, looking at the stairs, two gazes holding mild trepidation, one gaze holding nothing.

"Well…might as well get this over with."

The stairs groaned under their weight, dust wafting up with every step they took, the beam of light from the flashlight casting weird shadows until they reached the landing. Once they were up there, it became clear that there was only one door. Spock reached out, twisting the knob and shoving the door open. They took a step forward, their eyes shifting along the peeling wallpaper and the carpet that ran the entire length of the hallway as far as the beam of light stretched. There were dark stains on the floor and walls, none of them focused their gazes on them for long.

They tried every door, looking for one that was open. Surely one room would contain something that could get them out. Jim finally pushed a door open, Spock's flashlight immediately illuminating the interior. The state of disrepair was heightened in the room. The windows were grimy and filth encrusted so the only light that could get in was pale and weak. There was a table and a beaten-up armchair with its back facing them in front of an old device that they recognized as a television set out of Earth's history. The screen was on, the static running over the surface casting a stark glow on every object. They moved forward quietly, looking around at the interior.

There was a cloying sweet stench in the air, something familiar that they couldn't quite place, something that set their teeth on edge. Jim recognized the smell from his nightmares, his every step turning into an exercise in will. The flashlight aimed at the desk, moving over quietly they focused on the small book that was opened, a pencil resting on the top of it and a small note scrawled along the otherwise-blank page.

"Three men, tallest vertical, smallest horizontal, the medium inverted…" Bones summarized quietly. "What the hell?"

"A clock," Jim mumbled equally quietly. His mother had been interested in antiques; she had quite the collection of grandfather clocks. "Tallest is the minute hand, smallest the hour hand, the other is the second hand. Whoever wrote this wanted it to be at three o'clock with thirty seconds."

"What will that do?"

"When we find a clock, we'll know."

Spock's flashlight trailed away from the desk and alighted on the table. They blinked; there was a small key resting on the table. Jim walked forward, reaching out with his gloved hand and picking it up, looking at the tag that labeled the key for room 207. He turned to them with a wide smile and waved it in the air, and then froze. They watched his blue eyes widen in shock before he backed away. Bones' head whipped around to look at what was behind them and relaxed when he saw nothing; Spock immediately walked over and shined the light into the armchair.

A corpse lay there, its jaw hanging off at an angle, its chest ripped open and shining wetly with congealed blood. They had found the source of the smell.

But Spock didn't think that was what had shocked Jim. What had shocked Jim was the small box clock that was resting on its lap, and the trail of blood smeared along it proclaiming, _'Dare you, dare you, double double dare you'_. Spock looked to Jim and then back, before reaching his hand out carefully and setting the hands how they were supposed to be set.

The corpse's bloody bone white hand grabbed Spock's wrist as soon as the numbers were set, the jaw widening further as a high pitched scream escaped its mouth, their communicators joining the squeal. The corpse tightened its grip and the other hand flew out to Spock's throat to the accompanying shout from Jim. But it didn't connect; Bones had taken a plywood beam and smashed it into its skull. The hand turned limp, falling from Spock's wrist to land on the clock.

Ignoring the episode, Spock took the clock away and examined it quietly before smashing it to the ground. It broke, splintering into tiny fragments, and Spock kneeled down, reaching out and picking up a small key. "Room 212."

"Sure, ignore the fact that I saved your ass," Bones grumbled quietly. Spock looked up at him.

"Doctor, is not the saving of a crewmember its own reward? Do you truly need me to thank you?"

"I saved _you_, ya pointy eared bastard; you bet I need more than that."

Jim snorted, and Spock rolled his eyes. "Of course; I should have known that the fact that you saved a member of an endangered species would not be enough."

Bones bristled.

"Look, both of you, shut up. You're arguing in front of a goddamn corpse. And Bones, he never thanks anyone anyway, _or_ lets other people thank him. Stop antagonizing. Let's go; we'll try my key, and then we'll try Spock's; sound like a plan?"

"Agreed.

"Sorry Jim…" Bones finally grouched and the three of them left. The halls were empty, but the smell wouldn't leave their nostrils, even after they had left. Spock had plucked the pencil away from the book on the way out and took the map from Bones, crossing off the room they had just entered and placing a small check on rooms 207 and 212. That done they headed to room 207.

There were soft sounds that echoed from different hallways, sometimes sounding right next to them, but no matter how many times they turned their heads to look, they could see nothing. Spock, however, never turned his head; he could hear every sound as though it was echoing in his mind. The whispered words eating into his skin and mind.

Jim inserted the key and unlocked it, pushing the door open and revealing an empty flat. No tables, no chairs and no lamps, simply a wide empty space. Minus one small safe in the back, up against the wall. They looked at each other, two gazes holding exasperation before Spock moved forward to it quietly and handed the flashlight off to Jim. Jim shined the beam of light on the knob as Spock leaned his head down, pressing his ear onto the cool metal. They waited as Spock twisted it along, his eyes closed, waiting for the small clicks that indicated the tumblers falling into place. When the last click sounded Spock pulled away and opened the safe.

A severed head stared back at them, the words _'into its mouth, into its mouth'_ scrawled along the interior of the walls everywhere. They jerked back, but as Jim flinched and the flashlight beam shifted, a gleam of light from something in its mouth shined back. They froze, looking at that head and the gleam of metal in the mouth. Spock reached forward, quietly pushing the top of the head up so they could see into the mouth, seeing the small key lying under its tongue.

"Move over, Spock; if this thing bites, I'd rather have you holding its mouth open." That decided Spock shifted his grasp, holding it open as Jim reached forward, his gloves removed so he could reach his fingers into it. His body tensed as he tried to avoid touching the inner walls of the cheek, trying to avoid the gums and the teeth; the tongue he couldn't help but touch. The feel of it made him shudder. His entire body was a coiled spring of anticipation, waiting for the mouth to close, for it to try and bite, but it never happened. He pulled the key out carefully, and they relaxed. "Of course, it's just a head; it's only the _full_ corpses that we have to worry about."

"Naturally, naturally…" Bones stated calmly, nodding his head. Spock shut the safe and they left.

"What's that key to?"

"Um…I don't know. It doesn't have a tag."

"Great. More work."

Spock took the key and began trying doors as they went, crossing off the ones that it didn't go to in a thinner stroke than the original cross. Finally they were left with a key that didn't seem to go to any of the doors inside the apartment they could get to, and three small coins. "Alright, we'll try that Corpse key. Maybe that leads to something interesting."

"I wish you hadn't said that, Bones…"

"I'm beginning to wish the same…" McCoy said softly, shuddering. He handed the flashlight back to Spock and took the key.

They kept moving, quietly intent on anything but the noises that were increasing in frequency. When they got to the room, McCoy shoved the key into the lock and opened the door, right when Spock's flashlight ran out of batteries.

McCoy swore loudly, but found his mouth covered by Spock's hand. Jim blinked when he felt Spock's hand on his wrist slowly tugging him away from the open doorway. There were noises coming from the room, harsh, grating panting noises, something sharper and louder echoing as well. "What…" That hand around his wrist snaked around and covered his mouth, and then Jim realized something strange in the half-light he was stuck with. He could just see the gleam of Spock's eyes, staring directly into the room, their look wide and terrified. Spock didn't say a word, his lips pressed together tightly, and he slowly began tugging them back the way they had come, desperately trying to make sure they didn't make a sound.

But as he watched, Spock's eyes widened further, and they heard a loud screeching deadened sound. Spock suddenly didn't seem to care about not making noise; he grabbed the both of them by the wrist and whispered, "Run," and then he was off, dragging the two behind him, that loud screeching continuing even as they ran. Bones' fingers flexed and he took a brief look behind him, but he couldn't see anything, just hear the heavy footsteps and the continued dragging metal, and then suddenly the sound of static that only got louder as they fled.

Jim didn't look behind him, his only concern on getting as far away from it as possible. If it scared Spock, he didn't want to be caught by it. They shoved the door to the stairs open and ran out; Jim stumbled and fell, rolling down the stairs. Bones leaned back with a loud, "JIM," but was shoved out the door by Spock before the half-Vulcan ran back in. Bones growled and ran in after him, only to draw up short at the terror at the top of the stairs.

Jim and Spock didn't move, the Captain staring up in horror from his position crumbled on the ground at the foot of the stairs. Spock stared up, unmoving, black eyes tracing the tall muscled form at the top. It was wearing something like a butcher's apron, bloodstains covering it; its head was hidden behind a large and heavy metallic cover that was shaped like a pyramid. But the main thing that had caught their attention was the long heavy sword that trailed from his grasp. The size was incredible, but what truly worried them was the fact that it didn't have trouble lifting it.

It slowly began its lumbering path down the stairs, Jim slowly inching backwards on his back. He was cocky, but he wasn't stupid. If that thing grabbed them, they would be done. Even Spock took slow step after step backwards, Bones moving as well. The thing walked faster, its size and the weight of its burdens not hampering its speed at all. Jim backed away, slowly forcing himself onto his hands and knees and scrambling backwards. Spock reached out and pulled him upright, and the three of them turned and ran. But just as they made it out the door Jim felt a large hand on his arm, and let out a shout before he was dragged back from Spock's grasp. The two of them stumbled forward, and turned, looking back to their captain as he was lifted in front of the giant, its pyramid-shaped head focused on Jim's wide eyes and the half-gurgle that came from his mouth.

The giant sword slowly rose but before it could do anything, Spock had launched himself forward, bringing the metal flashlight down on the metal covering its head. The loud '_**CLANG**_' echoed, and the pyramid-headed thing dropped Jim to the ground, its hands instead coming up to cover the grating as Spock pulled Jim away, ignoring the vibrations trailing up his arm, dragging them both over to the other apartment building and slamming the unmarked key into the lock. He twisted it and shoved the both of them in, slamming the door behind them and locking it.

They backed up, staring at it with wide eyes, waiting for anything to happen, their breaths catching in their lungs, their hearts hammering in their chests.

That fear turned to hysterical laughter, Bones and Jim falling backwards on the floor. "My God, Spock! You hit him with a FLASHLIGHT!" They howled with laughter, and then their laughter stopped at the shriek of metal on metal. They crumbled, Spock's hands pressing over his ears as they tried to block out the sound in futile desperation. When it finally stopped they turned to look at the door, their eyes wide and their hearts pounding.

"We let it out… Oh God…we let it out…" Bones whispered. Jim and Bones traded a look, and then blinked when they heard the sound of Spock rooting through drawers in the desk. But when a beam of light emitted from the flashlight they relaxed.

"We must get out."

"What if it's waiting for us at the other end?"

"It is a risk we will have to take; we have no other choice."


	4. Quiet

This side of the apartment was similar to the other one. The only difference was the fact that what had been almost amused-yet-pissed-off-fear had shifted fully into a dark and cloying fear that choked their lungs. The flashlight beam never trembled in Spock's hand, but the eyes gave him away.

The shifting black pools of Spock's eyes danced from whisper to whisper, even though the rest of him remained locked forward. Bones and Jim couldn't hear what exactly it was that was said, but they knew that their Vulcan could, and they knew that whatever was said was slowly grating on Spock's nerves, winding him tighter than a bowstring ready to snap.

They hurried through the apartment getting steadily more high strung, the various traps and random moving corpses treated to a mixture of Vulcan strength and genius, and human ingenuity. But that never stopped them from feeling like falling to the ground, curling into a ball and staring blankly. They finally found the key to the courtyard, a large clunky thing that was in stark contrast to the petite almost delicate keys to the rooms. Bones took the key this time, his gloved hand clutching it tightly. With everything that had happened to them so far, it was a wonder they still had those keys.

They carefully opened the door to the courtyard quietly, their eyes trained for any movement. There was nothing. They crept into open ground carefully, their every step as light as they could keep it. The snow was still falling, and it had slowly piled up, right around their ankles. Running would be difficult, and that was not something they wanted to consider.

They continued down the courtyard, eyes drifting to every dark corner, focusing on every tree and shadow. Spock's ears were always perked for a sound, footsteps not their own crunching through snow, cries and screams, even though their communicators had proven to be a decent warning. Jim and McCoy pressed close to Spock, never actually touching him, but close enough to touch if they reached out just a little.

The crunch of their footsteps through snow echoed in the empty courtyard, their hearts beating in their chests in two cases, and in one, his side. They made it to the gate to the outside, and McCoy pushed the key into the gate and twisted it. The hollow 'clang' echoed, their hearts stopping for all of a second before they slowly pushed it open, the creak of the gate setting their teeth on edge.

When they had it open they stood there silently, eyes tracing over every shadowed street corner, and squinting through the steadily falling snow, their clear goggles praised.

"Well…" That syllable faded out to be replaced by a groaning scream that echoed from one end of the street to another, but there was no static, and no movement; none of them paid it any mind. Spock pulled the map from his pocket, spreading it out on the street, Jim and Bones taking look out while Spock examined it. Both of them knew it was useless; if something came, the only thing they could do was run, but at least they would get a head start if they saw it before the static sounded.

Finally he stood up, folded the map back up and placed it in his pocket. The streets were empty, the doors shut tight and the windows cracked and dirty. The streetlights were broken and musty, but they worked. Spock kept the flashlight off, but in his hand, aware of the fact that if and when the lights froze over there would be no light. He wasn't about to let it run out of batteries again, and the ones placed in his pocket would make sure it wouldn't.

There were no loud noises, no movement, simply falling snow, cracked concrete, heavy shadows, and dark. But there were whispers. Always there were whispers, flowing in never ending streams, the constant flow trickling into their brains and down their spines, the words slowly becoming a mantra in Spock's head.

But no matter how much they knew they had to keep moving, they knew they couldn't keep on like this. The constant running and high adrenaline levels were wearing them down, a form of quiet weariness seeping into their bones and numbing their thoughts. The cold was only tightening sleep's grip. They continued trudging along the deep snow until McCoy stumbled and fell. Jim pulled up short, his mind flicking towards other people who had fallen around him before, and who had never gotten back up.

"BONES!" he shouted out, turning around and dropping down next to him just as Leonard was pushing himself up, and spitting snow out of his mouth and brushing it out of his nose. Spock turned around to face the both of them wearily.

"This is BULLSHIT," McCoy finally shouted out, pushing himself up angrily, spitting to the side. "We're runnin' for our lives from these…THINGS that shouldn't exist, and I can't stop thinkin' about how goddamn _tired_ I am. I think I have a death wish."

"I think we're all tired," Kirk said with a smile, looking around at the open state of the streets and the lack of cover.

"It's honestly little wonder with all the constant adrenaline and panic and running… How long have we been out here?"

"Twelve hours, five minutes, eight seconds," Spock answered automatically.

"That's it? Twelve hours?" Spock opened his mouth and McCoy waved it away. "I don't need to hear that other stuff, but really, twelve hours?"

"Correct, Doctor."

"Damn…"

Jim yawned, and they looked to him, watching as he finally closed his mouth with a final puff of breath.

"You are both tired."

"Aren't you?"

"Yes, but I can continue."

"What do you want to do?" Bones asked.

"We need to find a safe spot, or…semi-safe spot. Someplace warm, out of the snow… We can sleep in shifts, that way we'll have a constant look out. No dead ends," Jim stated automatically, standing up.

"Logical."

"Alright…let's get to it."

Spock opened the map and they began searching through it. "Here?" Bones asked, pointing at a fork in the road and the forest that it was connected to.

"I would agree, Bones, but what do you think could be in that forest?" That simple question made Bones tense and finally shake his head.

"Alright. No forests then."

"Here." Spock pointed it out quietly, a narrow street that was up against a building on one side and had no turns or curves, but a very visible exit strategy should they be surrounded in the form of a narrow winding curved street that led to the park and looped around it.

"Alright, looks good, and then it's to the hospital?"

"Indeed," he ran a finger along the street he had chosen and they smirked when they noticed that it went right to three roads that all led to the hospital main entrance.

"Good work, Spock. You lead."

That decided they set off again, weary and stumbling, but determined. Bones tripped once, but was caught by Jim, the very snow turning into an enemy in a constant battle to survive. The cracked cement under the snow did not help matters much, nor did the debris littered under the heavy blanket of snow.

They turned down a narrow street, the streetlights hanging at an angle and their light faded and broken. The street was pockmarked with alleyways, dark and heavily shadowed. Their adrenaline soared whenever they neared one, their eyes focusing on it quietly, waiting for something to happen. It never did.

When they entered the main street Spock halted mid step, and froze, his head whipping around to stare down the street. They automatically turned to look, and blinked. There was nothing there. Their eyes turned to Spock and they watched him in confusion as he backed up slowly, brown eyes constantly focused in the distance over their shoulders, beyond their field of vision.

"What is it Spock? Can you hear something?" Jim asked softly, trying to gain eye contact with his First Officer. But then he felt Bones tug on his sleeve; he turned catching sight of Bones' wide-eyed face, and then looked into the fog and snow, following the mildly trembling line of Bones' arm.

There was a large shape in the distance, just past the last streetlight, the unmistakable form of a pyramid on the very top of it. Suddenly, they weren't so tired. Every second they were staring at it, the form got closer, and they began backing up, Spock's gloved hands slowly reaching out to grasp Jim and McCoy and pull them behind him.

"Spock, what are you doing?"

"There are three ways one could get to the hospital from here. One way is to your left, Doctor; the other way is to your right, Jim…" Spock said quietly, the two of them looked to either side and stared down the dark streets, the slow crackle of static beginning to ring in their ears. "Both streets are one way, and turn onto the same road, which will lead to the hospital."

"You're planning on running down this one."

"There is only one of it."

"We can't split up!"

"What would you recommend?"

"We split up. Bones, take your way; I'll take the middle."

"No, Jim. I believe that it is mainly after you. Take your side."

"Why would it be after me?"

"GO!" He shoved them both to either side as the pyramid-headed thing stepped into the light, a shriek of metal and static nearly crumbling them before they began running, snow kicking up behind them. Jim and Bones tearing down the streets presented to them, Spock going up the middle.

Jim ran, his breath catching in his lungs, the start of terror trailing cold fingers up his spine. The snow seemed to suck his feet into the ground, unwilling to let him go. The street seemed to narrow, the buildings looming overhead. He had never run as hard or as fast, his chest aching with the cold air that he pulled into his lungs. There was no end in sight, the long line of buildings to either side suffocating him.

And then the road forked hard to the right and he stumbled down it. The sight of Bones at the other end of the street nearly made him tumble, and suddenly the buildings didn't loom so much.

"BONES!" He shouted out when he saw him, waving his arm over his head. Bones saw him, and ran faster. They met in the middle of the street, and then noticed the side road, and the sight of the hospital at the end of it. They ran.

They finally made it; the building was square and flat, the many windows cracked, and what had once been a white and pristine building was now dirt encrusted and stained. There was no sign of Spock…

There was no sign of Spock.

That sudden realization slapped them in the face with all the force of a sledgehammer. They whirled, looking into the flurry of snow and bemoaning the state of almost constant twilight and fog this place was always in. They could see nothing.

Jim walked up and down the road a bit, looking down the path that Spock would have to take, hoping and pleading that he would show up. Finally Jim couldn't take it and put his hands over his mouth, screaming, "SPOCK!" at the top of his lungs. Bones joined in a second later, their fear at losing their hobgoblin overwhelming their fear of the town.

But no matter how loud or how long they called his name, there was no answer. The unending quiet seeped into their bones like the cold never could.

"What do we do, Jim? What do we do?"


	5. The Whispers

They moved on, entering the building, unable and unwilling to remain, Spock's earlier words spurring them on. The sight of that thing didn't help matters. When it began trudging up the road that Spock would have to take they had panicked, tearing up the main drive to the hospital and then throwing themselves at the wide double doors. When it swung open easily they almost sobbed in a mixture of relief and horror. If they could get in so easily, what would stop it? But then they had noticed the gate, and tugged it down, the material the same as the apartment doors. It fell into place with an echoing 'CLANG', the sense of finality from that one noise making them realize what they had just done.

Sure they had locked it out, but they might have locked themselves in.

They didn't have the flashlight; there were no lights, simply cloying darkness. There were no streetlights, nothing to illuminate the interior. They needed to find something, anything. They could easily lose each other in this darkness, and with that in mind, Jim reached out, grasping Bones' hand quietly. He would have felt silly, two grown men scared of the dark, and unable to see anything, but there was nothing funny about any of this.

They walked carefully, free hands stretched out to either side and in front of them, hoping to save themselves from colliding into anything. It didn't stop Bones from tripping over something on the floor. Jim pulled him upright, and they stumbled further, wishing desperately that Spock was there, and then a feeling of profound misery washed over them when they realized they wouldn't see him again.

"Why did he make us split up, Jim?"

"It was my order."

"Don't you start with that shit now, Jim. I can't concentrate on smashing your idiocy out of you at the moment, I… God… Maybe we should have, but…but I think I would have at least… Dammit, I'd have liked to know if he was really dead. He's just…gone, Jim. He's gone."

They kept walking, silence hanging over them, and Bones reached out suddenly, hand grasping a doorknob, Jim's fingers running over the glass window, and running his fingers over raised edges. "Office."

"Best bet for maps and flashlights." That said Bones began to twist the knob.

"You know…" Jim said as the knob twisted and Bones began to push it open. "Either something crazy is going to be behind this door, or Spock is. In fact, I'd laugh if we opened it and Spock was there and turned the flashlight on and said some sort of Vulcan style 'What would you do without me?'"

But when it was opened, the only thing there was darkness. They slowly walked forward quietly, and Bones swore when his knee found the desk. "Dammit!"

"Hush!"

There was still no sound, even as they stood quietly, holding their breaths, waiting for some sign that they had been heard. When nothing happened they began fumbling through drawers, opening and closing them, rooting through, and then Bones gave a sound like a sob and pulled something out, pushing a small button along the side. When a beam of light shone out, the two of them laughed for joy, but then stopped, their eyes locked onto two woman-shaped things in close cut nurse uniforms, the static from their communicators making an appearance. Their faces seemed blurred out, and their uniforms were bloodstained. Each of them clutched a rusty bloodstained scalpel in each hand.

They watched in joint horror as they seemed to jerk upright, their every movement disjointed and deadened. Jim and McCoy backed up quietly, and then ran, even as Jim snatched the map from the wall. When they looked back they watched as the two things made a disjointed jerky dance forward. One of them slashed its partner along the throat with the scalpel in her hand. Neither of them seemed to care.

They turned back, and shoved at the large double doors, throwing themselves into another part of the hospital. The doors swung shut behind them, and they stood quietly, positive something else would be there, only to see nothing.

The flashlight in Bones hand was shaky and both of them felt the absence of the half-Vulcan keenly. Jim spread the map on the ground, and Bones shined the light on the door, looking at the hallway number and indicating their position on the map. Jim examined it quietly. "It looks to me like the best route through is along this hallway, and then through this one."

Bones examined it as well before nodding. "That does look like the best way to go."

"Well… Let's get moving."

They walked, their footsteps echoing down the empty hallways, their every step halting and hesitant. The light shook constantly, but it was steady enough. Then they got to the hallway they wanted to use and found it blocked. Wood was nailed to the doors, various things stacked against them. There was no way through there.

"Of course," Bones sneered.

"Naturally, naturally, now what?"

The map came out again, and they looked for other possible routes. When they saw the most direct way through they went for another one. They went through that set of dank and musty hallways and found it blocked as well. When they went to another one they found a full hallway of the nurses looking at them; Leonard automatically turned out the light and pulled Jim back through.

They backed away from the doors, expecting at any time to have the nurses shove through the doors and attack them with their scalpels. It never happened.

"Jim…you don't think they're like moths, do you?"

"You mean attracted to light?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I mean."

"Maybe. Just a bit. But I'm not about to test it out."

"I'm with you on that one." That said they backed farther away from the hallway and switched the light on, pulling the map back out.

"Shit."

"Agreed, Bones, agreed…but we don't have a choice."

"We have a death wish."

"I'm beginning to figure that out."

The only path left went through the Morgue and the accompanying Operating Theater. Neither of them understood why the morgue was connected to that room. They didn't want to consider it. The door was larger and darker than the others, black, large and heavy. Jim took a breath, and slowly pushed the door open. The flashlight shone into a large room with small square rusted metal doors lining the walls, hanging off of rusty hinges. The floor was filthy and bloodstained; a few bloodstained tables were scattered around it. The entire thing was out of a horror movie.

The only blessing was it was empty.

Taking a deep breath, they took a step in, slowly walking into the dark empty room, their every step hesitant and careful. Their hearts were working on beating their way out of their chests. Then suddenly, the door slammed shut behind them. They whirled, the flashlight beam landing on the closed door.

There was nothing there.

The flashlight beam was trembling slightly, and Jim looked over at McCoy, a shaky smile on his face. "Scared, Bones?"

"About as much as you are."

"I'm not scared…" The sudden clang and shriek of rusted metal made the both of them jump, and they swung around, staring at the metal doors as they slowly creaked open. They watched in horror as long thin-fingered hands forced their way out of the compartments, and then began pulling the rest of it out, static pouring out from their communicators as it moved. Jim ran back, trying the door out desperately.

It wouldn't open, and he whirled to face him. "Run, Bones, RUN!"

The two of them launched themselves into motion, even as the beings began forcing themselves out of their metal tombs, sounds of screaming and shrieking. And then they began speaking, and Bones nearly stopped mid step. Their voices were familiar ones, ones he had heard begging for help, begging for him to save them, and he hadn't been able to. But he wouldn't let it stop him. He knew he had done all he could; there was no way he would let this place tell him what he should have done.

He wouldn't let it control him.

One crawled forward and reached out for Jim. Bones kicked it in the chest, and jumped over. They kept running. They tried desperately to get in the main door, and found it locked. They turned around, backs pressed to the wall, staring in terror as the creatures came out halfway out, reaching their clawed bony fingers out at them and shrieking.

Then Bones noticed the other door. He rushed over and shoved it open. He reached back and yanked Jim inside, and then shut the door. There was a bar next to it, and the two of them yanked it, breaking it down as they blocked the door with it. As soon as they backed up the door buckled under the force of the things trying to get in. They hurriedly ran up the stairs they were presented with and shoved the next door open. They closed it and blocked it again.

They dropped to the ground, chests heaving and their hearts pounding as they panted for breath. "Oh God, oh God…" Jim bit out.

"Thought you weren't scared…" Bones got out. They looked at each other and finally burst out laughing, throwing their heads back and falling into hysterical laughter, tears squeezing out before they could prevent them, their thoughts turning to Spock and their missing crew members. Finally they gained control, pushing their goggles up to brush at their eyes, the cold in the buildings the same as the outside. That was when they began observing their surroundings.

It was an observation room overlooking the operating theater. They looked at the many seats lined up facing a large, somehow clean window; when the rest of the room was faded and peeling, stuffing coming out of the chairs, and carpet torn, that was strange. They stood up and moved towards it, curiosity their only motivation. And then they saw what was in that theater and their hearts stopped.

They had found their Vulcan.

His arms were restrained over his head, and from what they could see his legs were restrained as well. But that wasn't the thing that mainly worried them; the main thing was the fact that he had been stripped out of his cold weather gear, and he was covered in what looked to be his own green blood from head to toe, a stained white cloth providing only a slim shred of modesty. The other thing that caught their attention was the nurses from earlier. They hovered around him, scalpels shining and green blood covering their uniforms. One of them had placed her hand on his face, the positioning the same as that of a meld. Spock was moaning.

It was too much.

Bones took his flashlight and slammed it down onto the glass, shouting as he did so. The nurses jerked their heads up, looking at them and cocking their heads in a way reminiscent of a bird; the one let go. Spock stopped moaning, but didn't move, his head lolling to the side weakly.

Bones kept swinging even when the flashlight dented and the glass bulb shattered. Jim picked up a chair from the floor and swung it, the glass shattering and ballooning out with the force. There was a pile of boxes right next to the window and they jumped onto it, climbing down, what fear they had replaced with an increasingly dominant desire to make them pay.

McCoy picked up a crowbar left on one of the boxes, and charged, swinging it as though it was a baseball bat and connecting flesh soundly. The nurse he had hit screamed at him, and grabbed the crowbar, before Jim came in with a board and smashed it into her head. They went from one to another, blood splattering them, even when it seemed like those things weren't even alive.

Finally they were down, and Bones began working on Spock's restraints to his hands as Jim took the feet.

"Come on, hobgoblin, come on… You can't be dead, you can't be dead…" He placed a hand to the nearly icy side, and nearly burst into tears when he felt a heartbeat, nowhere near as fast as it should be, but there, and then he noticed the vapor rising from his mouth, and the light trembling of cold. He tore off his jacket, spreading it out and pulling the cloth away as he covered Spock with it instead, beginning the slow meticulous process of cleaning the blood off of him to check for wounds.

They were minor, relatively shallow, and some bruises were found, but other than that there was nothing. No way to explain the blood, until Jim found a container. He walked over to it, the thing that had drawn his attention the strange cloying coppery smell that seemed to be coming from it. He shoved it open and nearly threw up; the entire thing was filled to the brim with Vulcan blood, and there were several more empty green stained containers nearby.

Leonard had been tearing the cloth into pieces, tying it around wounds, and then noticed the pile of Spock's clothes. "Hurry, Jim, get those, come on!"

Jim pulled himself together and gathered them. Between the two of them they dressed him fully and began taking him out, supporting him between them. He was alive, he was breathing, and they needed to get him out.

They kicked the door open and kept moving, hefting him between the two of them. And then they were out in the snow, and they nearly sobbed in a mixture of relief and terror. There was no safety to be found, nothing. They placed Spock on the snow covered ground and began trying to wake him up.

Finally chocolate colored eyes opened wide, and Spock let out a gasp, covering his head with his arms and curling up. Jim reached out, shaking him gently. "It's okay, Spock, it's okay, we have you, you're fine, you're fine, they're gone…"

Spock didn't respond, hands clutching his belly before he finally turned to the side, pushed himself forward, and retched. Emerald green blood poured from his mouth as he puked it up, his head bowed and his hands barely bracing himself over the growing pool of it. Jim realized where the other containers had gone, and Bones helped Spock brace himself carefully, keeping him out of the vomit and whispering to him quietly.

What he didn't know was that his whispers were drowned out by others.

Finally Spock stopped retching, and Bones pushed him out of the way of the vomit to curl up on his side, his hands rubbing at his back gently. Neither of them were expecting when Spock finally began whispering, the words pouring out of his mouth in Vulcan.

Their universal translators implanted into them whirred to life, and they listened in shock at the constant stream of broken words. Then the whispers started again, the entire town shaking with them, the words rising in pitch and volume, their communicators belting static as well as a constant litany of filth, the entirety of it screaming at their Vulcan. Calling him a whore, a traitor, telling him that he shouldn't have survived, that he was pathetic, and he could do nothing, that it was _his_ fault that his mother and his planet was dead, he was covered in the blood of innocents, countless dead and it was All. His. Fault.

Bones began shaking Spock and shouting at him to shut the hell up, that it wasn't true, that he shouldn't listen, even as Jim began shouting at the town itself, fury and anguish and pain building into a crescendo of profanity and fear filled words. The volume reached an impossible peak before suddenly it cut off. Bones pulled Spock close. It took a while, but slowly Spock began to gain awareness of his position and of the fact that he really was alive and safe.

When he finally pushed himself away and looked up at them both, they gave him small smiles. "Hey. We thought we had lost you…" They didn't know what else to say, but they knew it was not enough.

Spock didn't reply, and simply stared at them before slowly pushing himself upright. His eyes flickered from face to face, and his hands slowly reached out, touching Jim, touching McCoy, feeling them both, alive and whole, and there. They were ready when he finally collapsed into them. They ignored the heady smell of copper still covering him, and the slight sticky texture to his skin, and just held him close.

"My thoughts have become black."

"I know, Spock, I know… It'll be okay, it'll be okay. We'll get out of this. I promise." Jim prayed that his words wouldn't be the end of them.


	6. The Consequences of Melding with Demons

Spock was weak. They needed food, they needed water, something, ANYTHING more than what they had. McCoy's medical bag had been lost in one of their frantic chases, and he was beginning to feel its absence keenly. They couldn't lose him, they couldn't lose him, not when they had found him again. They kept their attention to either side of the road, hoping and pleading that there would be a supermarket or something like it. Something with food.

And then they saw it; it was run down and had several cracked window panes, but it was one of the most beautiful things they had ever seen. It was some form of convenience store, and from what they could see in the windows it had a food aisle, as well as a wall of flashlights and methods to cook whatever food they could get. They tried the door and found it locked. Bones went to the window and bashed it in with the flashlight.

Leonard gave Jim a smirk, together they got Spock through the window where he leaned against the wall, breathing, his clothing preventing the glass scattered on the ground from cutting him. The other two jumped in as well, helped Spock out of the glass and lent him against an aisle while Jim went down it, hoping against hope to find something that could be eaten safely. But while Jim did that, Bones looked for water bottles, and a new bag, hopeful to find various first aid equipment tools.

Jim found a few energy bars and brought them over, yanking the wrappings off and hoping that they would be worth it, nearly sobbing with relief when they were whole. He took a quick bite of one to make sure it was good, ready to spit it out if it even so much as tasted bad, and nearly fell to his knees when the taste of peanut butter filled his mouth. Instead he wolfed it down and brought the rest over to Spock, dropping his loot at their feet and smiling at him.

"We have food!" Jim shouted out, spreading his arms wide and an equally wide smile on his face, even as Bones brought over his armful of water bottles and medical supplies and dropped them to the ground. Jim went to unfreeze the water bottles, tossing the first one to Bones so he could use it to clean the blood off of Spock. Bones began to strip the top layers of Spock's clothing, removing his top so he could clean the cuts that were there and re-bandage them. Spock helped by lifting his arms and shifting himself so Leonard could wrap it, and Bones worked on not touching his skin for very long.

"Alright, lean forward for me…" Bones said softly, wrapping gauze under Spock's arm and over his shoulder and tying it tight. "There we go… Alright, now, sit up…" He pulled his clothes back on gently, but quickly. Spock had begun to shiver violently, and that would have been too much for his body to handle. Jim came back at that moment, a smile on his face as he dropped the unfrozen water bottles at their feet.

"So, anyone thirsty?"

"Do you even need to ask?" McCoy asked, grinning at him as he picked one up. He twisted the cap off and gave it to Spock to drink. A few quiet minutes of eating and drinking and they were done, taking the leftovers and putting them into the bag McCoy had gotten. Spock pushed himself upright, discomfort and pain bundled into a small ball and pushed out, leaving him mildly tired, but able to run if he had to, his mastering of the mental disciplines holding. At least that much was still left to him. He moved over to the electronics, pulling three flashlights down and opening the packaging easily. He reached a hand into the closed pocket of his coat, pulled out the batteries and stuffed them in, tossing one to Jim, one to McCoy and keeping the other. Clicking it on automatically, the immediate beam of light made the other two smile widely. "I knew there was a reason we missed you, hobgoblin!"

Spock looked up at him quietly, clicking the light off. He hadn't said a word since they had gotten him out of the hospital. They didn't know how to make him.

"Spock…can you still hear them?" Jim asked softly, causing Spock to look up at him. Jim didn't like the hollow look in his eyes, and then he remembered what that one had done, one of the first times Spock had been attacked. That thing had attacked his mind. Bones seemed to reach the same conclusion he had, and walked forward, flicking the light on.

"Spock, what did they do?" Jim asked as Bones removed the goggles and shone the light into Spock's eyes, watching as the inner eyelid flickered closed over it automatically. Jim moved closer. "What did they do, Spock?"

Spock didn't move, didn't say a word, his eyes half focused and blank. "What did they not do?" His voice was quiet when it finally came, and Bones hissed through his teeth. "To answer your question, Jim, yes, I can still hear them. I have heard them every second we have remained here, and now they are in my head."

Jim reached out automatically, only to find his hand grabbed in an unrelenting fist. Bones automatically barked out a loud, "HEY!" and blinked in surprise when Spock let go, and backed away quickly, his back pressing to the aisle behind him. "Spock?"

"You should have left me. I am not in control, I can hear them… I am Not. In. Control…"

"Spock, we aren't going to leave you, we weren't ever going to leave you; this place…whatever the hell is in this place…" A sudden burst of static poured out of their communicators, and they jerked to attention, their eyes widening, and Spock's eyes showing nothing but terror. They realized what he was going to do a second before he did it and reached out to him, trying to catch him, even as he bolted past.

They screamed his name, jumping out the window after him, the ice and cold and snow whipping them as they ran, the bare skin they had tingling and stinging. They never stopped running after that fleeing tall form, their flashlights on and pointed at his retreating back. When the things poured out of the storefronts around them, their harsh screams and gurgling cries pouring out of their rotted mouths and throats, Spock jumped over and into them, never slowing, his movements fluid and sure. One of them snatched him and he did a weird twist thing that the two of them couldn't quite see, under and down, sending the thing crashing into three others.

The other two weren't so lucky. But when one of them snatched Jim and made him give a surprised and pained shout, their brittle and bloody fingers deceptively strong, Spock drew up short. Bones smashed that one with a flashlight, but was soon grabbed by two others, their cold and bony fingers digging into his joints and shrieking at him, and that was when Spock dove into the fray with something like a snarl. Before they could blink two of the things had been ripped from them and tossed down the street, and they were grabbed and pulled out of the tangle of rotten limbs and pain.

Finally they were out of them, half running, half being dragged behind the Vulcan. They watched in something bordering horrified disbelief as the ice around them began converging, and suddenly rose up in front of them. They were trapped. They were shoved behind the stronger Vulcan as Spock crouched, watching the converging creatures with all the intent of a predator, and suddenly they had a brief understanding of what pre-reform Vulcan might have been like.

Before they could truly process he had suddenly launched himself under and around, yanking an arm off one of the things with a sound that would haunt their nightmares for years, and proceeded to _beat _the creature with its own arm. Spock was emotionally compromised, and this time, his target wasn't Jim. It was insane, and at that sudden last-ditch attempt at survival, at protection, made the two humans look at each other before they took their flashlights, hefted them, and swung away.

It became a game, see who could compete with the chaos that the out-of-control Vulcan was making, and possibly even match it. It was wonderful, it was exhilarating, and then Spock pulled up short. His head cocked slightly as the static shifted to a whine and then cut off into a low growl. They watched in amazement as the ice began melting, the creatures slowly crumpling into themselves. Spock tossed the arm he had been using to the ground where it bubbled and melted into a puddle of something resembling black tar, Spock's eyes tracking it impassively.

Jim and McCoy looked at each other before cracking up, wide smiles on their faces as they watched the Vulcan pace, and then noticed the slight cock to his head, the anticipation in his posture and the shifting of his eyes. "What is it, Spock?"

"There is something else out there."

"Well, obviously…"

"And it is getting closer," he finished quietly, tensing slightly.

They looked at each other, and slowly began ushering him down the road. They walked in silence, Spock's head actively following the whispers, his head cocked to listen. It was one of the most disconcerting things they had ever seen, right after seeing Spock rip one of the thing's heads off. He still wouldn't acknowledge them. It was almost as though he was afraid to, almost like he didn't trust himself not to snap at them, but there was something they needed. "Do you still have the map, Spock?"

The half Vulcan drew up short and his hand slowly drifted to his pocket, reaching into it and pulling out the folded and stained parchment. Flattening it he shined the flashlight on it, examining it quietly and then looking up at the surrounding area. "We are back where we started."

"What?"

Spock indicated the street sign and the name, 'Milton St' and then indicated behind them. There was the abandoned school building.

"That's…that's impossible," Jim gasped out. Bones was on his way to cursing a blue streak, but then Spock moved a little farther forward and gingerly stepped on the ground in front of him. The street broke, shattering like glass and ice, until there was nothing there aside from what looked to be a black pit. The world around them seemed to shatter and crumble under its own weight until it didn't even look like a town anymore; it resembled a child's scribble, the idea of a town.

"Now we are not."

They stared at him, looking around at the perversion around them and then back, a feeling of unease and confusion trailing up their spines.

"What the hell happened, what is this…place?" Jim asked softly, the air around them was heavy with silence; the feeling of dread in this area was palpable. McCoy, however, had a different question.

"How did you know?"

Spock touched a finger to his temple gently at that question, and took a step into the pit. They shouted, reaching out for him, only to draw up short with the realization of the fact that Spock didn't fall. Instead he took another step, and then another until he seemed to be floating on air. Their eyes widened in confusion, shock and amazement gleaming, "What the hell?"

He turned around to face them, his head cocked to the side. "This is not real. It is an illusion; we've surpassed expectations, and as such this place has changed to reflect that."

"'Surpassed expectations', what the hell does that mean; how are you doing that?"

"It is not real."

"Not real, huh? Sure looks like a big black pit to me…" Bones leaned over it and looked down, clicking the flashlight on and pointing it into the blackness. It never touched bottom, a beam of light that pierced never-ending darkness. Then he shined it at Spock's feet, and still he seemed to be standing on nothing.

"That's impossible," Leonard whispered.

Spock reached out to them both. "It is only as impossible as you make it. Come."

"Why, why are we still going? What's at the town hall?"

"I do not know, I only know that we must."

"Why?"

"It is the only way to get out," Spock answered quietly. That made them blink, before they looked at each other. As one they took a breath, stepped out, and then began to fall. They felt the ground shift, their hearts stopping as they let out a simultaneous shout of alarm and fear, and then they were grabbed. Spock held them, crouching on nothing, hands wrapped around their wrists tightly, eyes behind clear goggles worried and alarmed as he held them suspended over a sea of nothing, their flashlights clutched tightly in their other hands and shining down past their feet.

They looked down, eyes wide and terrified, even as they looked back up at Spock, silently begging him to not let go. They noticed the way his eyes narrowed slightly, observing that fleeting thought and tensing, offended that they could even consider such a thing. "You believe that you will fall, and so you fall; should you believe that you can stand on it you shall be able to. Believe, you can stand, trust me. I will not let you fall. Listen to me, you can stand, the ground is there, what you see is not real, stand." Jim took a breath and paid attention to the quiet voice that continued mumbling quiet reassurances and realities.

He let the words become a part of him, and suddenly, he felt something, right at his waist, level with where Spock was standing. He took his freehand up, and placed it down, and blinked. There was something there, and when he stared at it, he began to see the start of a floor, a dark, black floor that cut off right in front of him. Jim let out a burst of laughter, reached to it, and felt it. He let go of the flashlight and watched in shock as it stayed on the barely visible outline of the ground. Bones had a similar expression on his face, but while Jim could see the faint outline of a floor, McCoy could not.

Jim braced himself on it, and Spock let go. He pulled himself up, even as Spock shifted his other hand to McCoy to hold him with both. Jim laughed, looking down at the illusion of nothing, and then looked to McCoy. "Come on, Bones, can't you see it?" Jim whispered. "It's there, he's right. It's just hard to see…"

Spock held onto him, even as McCoy looked to the nothingness below him and back up. "I can't see it…"

"Doctor, it is there, truly; you must believe it."

"Goddamn it! I can't see it, Spock! It's not there! There's just this big pool of nothing that you're somehow standing on."

"Doctor…if you cannot believe in that…believe in me. It is there, Leonard; trust that I am not lying to you. Trust me, Leonard."

It was the sound of his name that did it. McCoy looked up at the half-Vulcan staring down at him, eyebrows pinched in worry. He then looked back down, forcing himself to believe it, and laughed when he finally saw it. "Well, I'll be damned…" He smiled, and Spock pulled him up. Jim smiled at him, and then to Spock.

"How did you know?"

Spock touched a finger to his temple quietly, and turned, continuing to walk on.

"So I guess it was a good thing they melded with you; you can show us where to go…" Jim said quietly, a disgusted yet joking tone placed on his words, and it made Spock tense, but at an apologetic look from those upset blue eyes he relaxed.

"You know…usually listening to the voices in your head is a bad thing," Bones finally said with a small smirk.

"Who is to say that it is not?" Spock asked quietly. None of them had an answer for that, and they hoped they wouldn't need one.


	7. Losing Yourself and Others

It was the weirdest thing, walking on what should have been nothing. Bones kept shining the light at his feet and grinning, the look of darkness disconcerting but slowly becoming amusing. Spock had turned into a type of walking freak-o-meter; any time he tensed or stopped the other two would automatically freeze, watching him carefully for any reason. Sometimes he shook it off; other times he pulled them across to one of the shady alleyways that somehow still had form even in all the twisted insanity around them.

The first time they had done that, they had tried to ask him why; he had covered their mouths with his gloved fingers, eyes focused on the sliver of 'street' they could see. Two seconds later, that large thing they had run from before moved into view, that pyramid shifting from side to side, somehow looking for them. They felt their hearts pick up speed, thumping an offbeat rhythm, and then it was gone, moving off down the way. They had trusted Spock after that.

The disconcerting nature of it all was getting more pronounced. Bones never shined the light down any more, a feeling of vertigo striking him whenever he did. Instead their eyes shifted to the melting and sagging surroundings, nausea rising in their guts and making them sick. The only good thing was the fact that it was no longer snowing; their goggles were removed and hung around their necks, ready should everything not be as it seemed. It had already happened so often that they weren't willing to leave anything to chance.

They were quiet, until at one point in time Jim began quietly singing an offbeat melody, the other two looking at him quizzically, until the rhythm got to them. Slowly but surely what had become an off kilter beat had gained a background and a decent rhythm. It was one of the only moments of amusement they had ever really had the entire time. But happiness couldn't last long in that place.

The whistling died in their throats as they stared up at what the black road led to. It was the only fully formed and shadowed building anywhere they could see. Strangely enough, that made it seem more dangerous. It was a large stone building, pillars and steps making it seem more like a capital than anything else. They walked forward quietly, eyes dancing from shadow to shadow. There was nothing, no movement, no sound, just shadow after shadow, running across their vision.

The large double doors in front of them drew their attention like moths to a flame. The black metallic surface glared at them when their flashlights hit the surface, their reflections flickering at them, pale like ghosts or will-o-wisps. They moved forward quietly, eyes focused on their deathlike reflections.

That might have been why they didn't notice the things until it was too late. Spock reached out to grab the handle when two sharp cries of pain caught his attention. He swung around just in time to watch his companions slump to the ground, what looked to be vines made of darkness wrapped around their ankles as they were dragged backwards towards the pit. This time there was no shadowed floor.

Spock took one look and dove forward, snatching their wrists and bracing himself before pulling back. Jim and McCoy stared up at him, eyes wide and expressions reflecting pain and fear as the two of them were used as a makeshift tug-of-war rope. Spock managed to take them past the first step, his muscles straining and expression fixed, and then more came, latching onto their ankles and yanking. McCoy and Jim were dragged to the pit shouting, even as Spock was dragged forward, his feet pulled out from under him as he was yanked towards the precipice.

Jim shouted out, "LET GO, SPOCK! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

Spock's fingers slackened reflexively in surprise at the noise directly next to his ear, and the two were dragged away from him, down into the pit, screaming all the way. Spock stared in shock from his position on his belly, before crawling forward quickly, staring into the blackness with wide eyes, their screams echoing in his ears.

They were gone.  
…

McCoy woke up in darkness. He jerked in shock, his head swinging back and forth futilely, hoping against all hope to see a crease of light, anything. His last memory was of being dragged into darkness and staring up into the face of a man who had lost everything. That made him immediately start thinking about the flashlight and finding out where the hell he was. Seemed like the overbearing logic of that Vulcan was getting to him, and he wasn't sure if he should be annoyed about it or not.

And then he realized that he had lost both of them and himself in one go. That made him think of Spock, and then that made him think of Jim. But none of those thoughts brought him any closer to seeing any of them. He needed to get out.

He fumbled around in the darkness, fingers groping along the floor in hopes of grabbing something smooth. He crawled forward and back until he bumped his nose into a wall. He gave a stifled curse, his hands coming up to cover it in the blackness around him. "No blood, well what do you know. Considering all the other shit going on I wouldn't be surprised if I had broken it," he grumbled quietly, removing his hand and placing it on the wall, reaching the other one up as he stood. When he couldn't touch anything an entire arm's length away from his straightened position he began inching along the walls, a hand always placed to the left of him.

His boot hit something, a metallic 'tinging' sound echoing strangely in the obviously large space around him. He took a breath and slowly bent down, his hand sweeping the ground in front of him blindly. He finally gripped the object and gave a laugh when he realized it was the flashlight, and then he stopped.

"Great. I've got the stupid thing, and now I'm too scared to turn the blasted thing on. What is it they say about ignorance being bliss?" He gave a snort, and then sighed, "Alright, here's the deal, I am in a large space, I can't see a thing, and I have a flashlight. Yet, so far, nothing has happened… What the hell do I do? Do I continue on and hope for a stroke of luck that leads me in the right direction? Or do I turn it on, and if I do…what the hell is going to be there to greet me?"

McCoy took a breath in, and let it out, clicking the light on as he did so. He immediately let out a shout and fell backwards, watching his assailant do the same. A second later he burst out laughing. He was staring at a mirror. He took a breath and shoved himself up, staring around the space surrounding him and let out a piercing, weirdly echoing whistle. "Wow…"

He was surrounded by a circular wall of mirrors, every single one of them reflecting his pale worn image in his grey formfitting snow gear over and over again. He waved the flashlight around, multiple beams of light reflected and magnified. This was the most light he had seen since they started, and it was hurting his eyes. He squinted, and began walking, reaching a hand out and touching the glass wall with his gloves, his hand always on it. He was hoping for a trick mirror, something that would let him out. Yet even as he walked around examining the mirrors for hinges, he noticed something strange.

Out of the corner of his eye whenever he focused his attention on one mirror the ones next to them seemed to change, shift. He paused and turned his head quick, and still he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He slowly turned back to his original staring and then jolted back, his eyes widening as he backed away slowly, his flashlight dancing back and forth on the mirrors around him.

In each and every one of them, Bones watched as the reflected space was slowly coated with red blood, and when he looked at the corners of the room he was currently trapped in he could see that the red liquid was slowly moving out towards him in sluggish trails. He gave a brief jolt, staring around and watching as his figure was slowly but surely covered. A metallic tang coated his mouth and he spat. He was horrified to see that what he had spat out was blood.

He took his flashlight and swung at one of the mirrors, hoping to break it and escape, only to have the mirror reform even as it shattered. Static was beginning to come from his communicator in crackling waves, and he was becoming increasingly more desperate. The metallic taste kept coming and it was to the point where it was coming out his nose; he couldn't breathe…

"DADDY, THIS WAY, DADDY, THIS WAY!" His head jerked to the side, watching as one of the mirrors yawned open. He dove through it, sticky and smelling of blood, but alive. He coughed the blood up, spitting it to the side and groaning, curling into a fetal position and gasping.

"It's good to see you again, Daddy…"

"Joanna?" His head whipped upright, blood running into his eyes and down his nose but even then he could see what was in front of him. The outline of a little girl was in front of him, backed by a light that was pouring out of the door behind her. His flashlight had skittered to the side and lay facing him. He moved forward shakily, wiping the blood off of his face, as he tried to get a better look at her.

"I missed you, Daddy…why did you leave me? Don't you love me, Daddy?"

It was too much. He ignored the fact that he was bloody - from what he had found, his clothes were bone dry - and reached out, pulling her to him in a hug. "No, sweetie, I love you, I do… Things just…didn't work out, I'm sorry…" His voice trailed off. She felt wrong, cold and clammy from where his cheek pressed into her hair; her body felt bulky, like he could squeeze her into a set shape. He slowly pulled back, eyes squinting to see her features, and jerked backwards.

The thing that looked like his daughter was a life sized ragdoll, her eyes crossed off, and her mouth split the width of her face, and when she opened it to speak, he was horrified to see sharp pointy black teeth running along it. "What's wrong daddy?" He backed up, reaching out and pulling the flashlight to him, and then shining it on her.

The cloth she was made of was bloodstained and looked like the cloth one would make sacks with; the thing that stood for hair was black and tangled and matted and the body was stitched together in large, fat, crude child stitches. "Don't you love me?"

He scrambled backwards faster. She seemed to be getting angry. "I've been good to you! I warned you when those things were coming, I told you about the key, I told you about everything you've come across so far. Why don't you love me? Why can't you love me?" McCoy stood up, and ran, into the light, away from her.

"Why are you running, Daddy? Do I scare you?"

McCoy found himself in a lit empty room; more mirrors were positioned everywhere he could look. He whirled around, hoping to escape, when the mirror that served as the door to the other room swung shut.

"Why do I scare you, Daddy?"

He couldn't see her…he couldn't see her. He ran to the mirrors, trying to open them, trying to break them, always on the alert for a sign of blood, but no matter what he did, he couldn't open or break anything. There was no way out, there was _no. way. out_!

"Is it because I look like this, daddy?"

Leonard felt a hand on his leg and looked down, directly into that sharp-toothed sackcloth face, and let out a yell. He jerked back and she seemed to frown; he watched in horror as what looked to be sand slowly leaked out of a split in her stitching. "But Daddy, this is how you made me, Daddy… This is your fault. You left me, Daddy… You LEFT ME!"

She seemed to expand, filling the mirror room, and her mouth yawned open, the teeth lengthening and her crossed-out eyes staring directly at him as he was backed into a corner.

"I'm going to make you look like this too, Daddy… I'm going to make you look like this too."

She reached out to grab him and he dove, rolling out of the way, his heart in his throat and his eyes as wide as they could get, adrenaline flooding his system. She reached out again and he ran, desperately trying to avoid her clutches, the floppy ragdoll hands practically useless. But there was something about the way she led him. Letting him escape at the last minute when by rights she could have pinned him to the floor ages ago. And that's when it hit him.

There was no way out. She was toying with him.

Then she began humming, something soft and lilting and very much insane… Something that a child would do when they were absentmindedly playing with dolls, but this time, he was the doll. Suddenly, on either side of him the large arms flopped down, slamming to either side of him and pinning him in, as Joanna's face slowly lowered down to fill his vision, its breath rank and foul.

"I caught you, Daddy…"

Her arm reached out to him and he watched as more sand fell, then got a desperate idea, a hopeless idea, but one he had to try. As she reached out and tried to grab him, Leonard ducked under her arm, grabbed that loose child's stitch, and tugged.

He watched in amazement as that stitch gave way and suddenly, the rest started falling away. The Joanna creature looked at that and frowned, her sharp teeth bared as she lunged for him, and he ducked under it, grabbing the stitch that connected her head to her body and pulling as hard has he could.

Sand fell out like rain, covering the ground and him, the dust spreading to engulf them, even as the thing collapsed.

He fell into the pile of sand and sackcloth, his breath hard in his throat, his eyes running and his face covered with blood and dirt. He scrambled back when he saw something moving. Out of the main body of cloth a medium sized mound slowly pushed its way out of the wreckage. It looked small, like a little girl and that's when he realized that that was what she was. She was wearing a bloody nightdress, and her hair was tangled and matted. And then he recognized her.

"Joanna?" he asked softly, watching in shock as the girl crumbled into a mound of sand and began to cry. He moved forward cautiously, and tilted her head back. He would recognize that face anywhere. But he had never seen it so death like.

Blood was trickling out of her nose, out of her eyes, out of her ears, and out of her mouth. She looked up at him, the blood running out of her eyes like tears. Her breath rattled in her throat, and the realization came to him that she was dying, his daughter was dying… "Don't you love me, Daddy?"

Leonard pulled her to him, tucking her into his lap, his eyes brimming with tears. "I love you, sweetheart, I promise…" He pulled her close, feeling her wrap her arms around him weakly, sobbing into his coat. Slowly but surely he felt her begin to shift and crumble, until he was holding only a skeleton, which shortly turned to dust like the rest.

He looked down at the dust in his hands and on his coat, and around him, the constantly mirrored reflections around him staring back at him in condemnation, and sobbed.

He didn't even care when he felt that vine-like thing wrap around him and take him back up into more darkness, he just didn't CARE.


	8. Fear

Jim woke up; his eyes flickered open, and immediately snapped shut again. He was surrounded in a brilliant white light that hurt his eyes, making them tear up. He slowly turned over onto his stomach, laying there prone in the light, eyes shut tight and body tense and shaking. There was something in the air, something dark, something strange, something that enveloped everything around him. His thoughts turned to his friends, the tears from the light sliding down his face and making him feel like he was crying for them. He needed to get up. He needed to get out. He needed to find them again.

Jim slowly forced his eyes open a crack, forcing himself on his hands and knees, and gradually opened his eyes wider and wider as he forced himself to get used to the glaringly white light surrounding him. When he could finally open them without blinding himself he did so, forcing himself to stand upright and look around to see what was around him.

Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing. He was in a wide open white room, no reason for the lights, just the vague outline of the floor and walls. "Hello!" he shouted, and paused, staring around at the emptiness surrounding him. There wasn't even an echo. He looked around again and blinked, looking over at the far wall; there was a door there. It hadn't been there before.

He slowly moved forward quietly; there was nothing else for it, either he went into that room, or he stayed there. He couldn't stay there. He spotted his flashlight against the wall and picked it up. He had had it for so long he couldn't contemplate staying without it.

Jim took a breath and pushed the door open, blinking at the sudden darkness in front of him. He looked back at the white light, and then at the open door of darkness. Choices. This was all about choices. Choosing to beam down, choosing to follow the clues in the apartment, choosing to continue on without Spock, choosing to follow Spock. Now, a choice to stay in the light, or continue on in the dark. The only difference was, while the light was something he knew, this time, the light felt strange, and that darkness looked welcoming.

He took a breath, took one last look at the light around him, and clicked the flashlight on, entering the black.

The first thing he noticed was how very cold it was, the second was the flakes of snow that were falling, and the third was how very _small_ he felt. He hadn't felt like this since Tarsus IV, and that realization made him hesitate where he was, staring at the darkness around him and breathing deeper, slowly trying to calm himself. He stood there, looking around and finally calmed enough to continue walking, even though the darkness no longer felt as welcoming as it had before. He pulled the goggles over his eyes and continued on.

The snow was starting to thicken, the darkness cloying and pressing around him. There was no hint of any of his surroundings, just the ground he was walking on. The space around him was so wide that the flashlight didn't even graze the end of it. It was empty. It was quiet.

It was so goddamn _quiet_. No sights, no sounds. Nothing. Just him.

He continued on, slowly getting the feeling of quiet despair sliding up along his spine, making him shudder, making him glance around. He had never liked being alone, and this place…this place seemed to be made of loneliness. He took a breath, his eyes shifting around him, desperation and fear slowly sinking into his very bone marrow.

He would welcome even the sight of those _things_ to get out of this feeling of being alone. Jim needed something else to focus on. Something else to hold on to. He was so alone.

Then he saw it, on the edge of his flashlight beam - a wall. He gave a laugh, and ran, watching as a door slowly came into focus. Jim lurched forward, grabbing the handle and tugging it open, only to halt. More blackness. Another empty room, more snow. He shuddered, then turned around, looking at the vastness in front of him. He closed the door behind him and kept his hand on the knob; gathering his breath he let out a shout.

There was no echo. So much for that method of gauging distance. He turned around, and slowly shoved the door open. Nothing, just darkness and snow. Jim took a breath and stepped in quietly, pushing the door closed behind him. As soon as it shut the world around him shifted. The light changed, becoming the half-light of a snowy morning. There were dead crops to either side of him, the trees were dead, the grass was covered with snow.

The world around him was dying and silent and he knew exactly where he was.

Tarsus IV.

Jim felt his breath catch in his chest, his eyes shifting around to examine everything around him quietly. Unwilling and afraid to move. He turned around and found that the door was still there. He had a choice. He could go back. But there were two problems with that - going back meant never seeing Spock or Bones or his ship again; the other was he would be trapped in darkness for the rest of his however-short life. That was unacceptable. He had to move forward.

But he had no desire to.

Jim took a breath and slowly let go of the knob, watching as the door shifted and then vanished. There was no going back. He turned slowly, facing the emptiness, facing the memories, and deciding that he could move forward. There was no other choice. He took a step, and then another; breathe in, breathe out.

There were no sounds, no birds, no animals, no cries of hunger and fear as there had been before, and that was what reminded him that he was still in the bowels of whatever this place was. It wasn't real. It was an illusion.

But that didn't make it any less haunting.

Jim pulled his hood up over his head, huddling further into it, trying to remind himself of the differences from the last time he had been here. Then he had felt the cold seeping into his bones. Then he had been smaller, less experienced. Now, now he was Starfleet, a captain. And at the moment two of his crew were in trouble. He had to get out, he had to help them.

If he could help himself that is… He banished the thoughts and continued on, ignoring the feeling of loneliness and concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He was making good progress; the center of the village was just a bit further. He had noticed a bit of a theme. Everything came from the center. Everything came from the heart.

A sudden shrill scream pierced the air, stopping his musings, drawing him up short. His head swung toward the direction it had come from and he hesitated for the fraction of a second it took for another scream. Before it had even begun to end he had bolted off in the direction it was coming from, running as fast as he could. He didn't even hesitate to consider the dangers. He was reacting on pure instinct.

Jim slid to a halt staring into the clearing in front of him, his chest heaving as his heart attempted to beat its way out of his body. He backed away slowly, eyes wide, his stomach slowly turning upside down. The police officer he had seen earlier was stretched on the ground; her arm was flung out to him, her body lying prone on the snow and her eyes were wide and glassy. Her mouth was open and blood leaked from it in a solid stream; her skin was as white as the snow around her. But the main thing that made his small meal of protein bars wish to be spewed onto the snow around him was the small frostbitten and mangy creatures he had seen in that alley.

They had dragged her to the ground; he could see evidence of not only a struggle but a very violent one. They had torn through her clothing, and had been in the process of devouring her alive. Her ribs were showing and had been almost picked clean, their sharp little teeth and rotten faces covered in her blood and flesh hanging between teeth and claw-like fingers. They looked up at him, black bleeding sockets seeming to stare into his very soul. He backed away quietly, eyes wide, and then one of them spoke. "We found food, Jim…"

Jim gagged, whirled and ran, listening to the calls from little kids who had been starving, unable to go on, who had needed something to eat, who would have died otherwise. None of that changed anything. He felt his stomach heave, his eyes running and tasted the disgusting, acrid flesh that had once gone down his throat when he had no choice. He fell to his knees and heaved, throwing up what he was thankful to see looked like protein bars and not the flesh he thought it might be. He whimpered, and then heard them; he whirled around, looking back at the approaching creatures, and forced himself upright, trying to ignore the way they looked at him, their mouths bloody and their frostbitten fingers and toes bleeding, their hands outstretched as they came closer, and somehow he could see the pleading looks on their faces.

He didn't stick around to stare, he couldn't. He turned and ran, never stopping, getting himself lost in the forest that shouldn't exist, tripping and stumbling, wishing to forget, wishing the memory would return to where it came, locked behind a rusted door, unable to get out. He choked, tripped over a root and collapsed on the forest floor, the snow flying up around him, his body lying prone. He pushed himself up slowly, tears choking him as he tried to stand, and saw the door in front of him.

Jim looked at it, eyes blurry as he slowly moved forward, and feet trailing. He could get out. He could get out. He could lock it behind a door and forget about it. He needed to forget about it. Kirk's hand reached out slowly and grasped the knob, twisting it weakly, his body tense yet somehow lax. He fell through the door, into more darkness. He didn't have the flashlight, and the door swung shut behind him.

He sobbed quietly, pushing his goggles away and throwing them away, curling into a ball, and then into a tighter ball when the light came on. But the slow crackling of static made him slowly wearily look up, directly into the pyramid shape on top of a large thing carrying a giant sword and clothed in a butcher's apron. Jim slowly pushed himself upright, looking up at the thing and forced himself to his knees.

"Hello, you…" Jim coughed. "Didn't think I'd see you again. Shouldn't be too surprised to find you, though…" He stood up quietly, body shaky and eyes half lidded. "Spock says you're after me." The thing didn't answer, simply stared at him. "I don't know why you'd be after me. But I can guess. This place seems to try and find whatever scares us, whatever is in our brains and our hearts. Spock's guilt… Bones… God, what could be wrong with Bones?" He made a face, his thoughts turning to his friends' daughter. "But you… You're something that's inside _me_. Well, okay then… What are you?"

It took a step forward, but Jim was tired of running; he held his ground. "I'm scared of you… I'm so scared I think I might throw up. You're a part of me and you terrify me, so you're something that's supposed to be bad. What are you?" He backed up a step, when the pyramid-headed thing took a step too close, eyes still focused on that metal grating. "Are you my arrogance?" It took another step. "My pride?" Another. "My selfishness?" Another… "My lust?" It froze.

Jim stared at it closely, looking it up and down. "Well… You're a big boy, aren't you? You're also destructive and deadly. You want to hurt me, you want to hurt others. Is this supposed to be some sort of lesson? Some weird fucked-up 'Christmas Tale'? Are you the Marley to my Scrooge? Because you're good at it. I don't think I could touch anything else for a while if you're the result. But you know what… I don't care anymore. I have to get out of here, and I can't let you stop me. I understand what you're here for. I get it now. I get what the rest of them are for. But I can't let you stop me. I have two members of my crew who are in who knows how much trouble, and there is no way I'm leaving them alone." He straightened, tears still staining his cheeks and his face flushed and sweaty, but he looked like the captain he was. "So, I'm going to ask you nicely - get out of my way, and let me go, please, I need to save them, and you're not going to stop me."

The pyramid-headed thing stared at him for a bit longer, and then before Jim could blink the sword was placed on the ground, the blade angled under the pyramid, and suddenly it plunged itself down on its own blade. Jim stared with his mouth open.

"Holy shit, when you let someone pass, you let someone pass…" He moved around it quietly, looking at the limp thing next to him. He shuddered. "Note to self, get rid of the porn stash."

He continued walking, trying to ignore the crushing loneliness that the place around him seemed to exude. But there was nothing he could do. His mind was in turmoil, his heart was in his throat and his stomach was roiling. If he could throw up he would, for things that had been locked up for years had been revealed again. He couldn't stop thinking of it. He couldn't stop feeling like crumbling, and finally he did, shaking, mind in turmoil.

He had admitted to fear, and somehow it had made it more real.

The tentacle of darkness reached down again, wrapping around him and slowly lifting him up, his body limp. He was done.


	9. Tears

Spock stared into the abyss in front of him, eyes wide, and slowly backed away. His ears were still ringing from when Jim had shouted, his mouth pulled in a thin line and his face tight. There was a new voice now. Blaming him for the death of his friends. He let go. He let go… Jim, Leonard…gone.

He backed farther away from the edge, resting against the first step, unmoving, eyes unfocused. The doors creaked open behind him, his body tensing and his ears perked for it. He slowly turned his head, watching as it creaked open impassively. There was light beyond the doors, pouring out and casting weird eye-catching shadows. His own was thrown into sharp relief, into the dark around him. The buildings continued to melt and roil until there was nothing around him, nothing but the open door and the building behind him.

He didn't want to continue. He didn't want to.

"Spock…" He froze, his eyes widening and his head whirling around to stare into the light, another shadow spilling out over him. A familiar shadow. He knew it was illogical, he realized the facts of what happened in this place, and yet he couldn't stop himself. He needed to resist. He stood up slowly, and followed it. His feet dragged, his head was bowed, every muscle protesting against it, but something told him to continue. Something told him to move.

He crossed the threshold, into the light, the shadow melting and vanishing into nothing. As soon as he was in the light fully, the doors shut behind him and whatever had been pulling him vanished. He slumped, lax, every muscle protesting the movement from a force not his own. And now he couldn't get out. Spock's hands reached up, grasping the goggles covering his eyes and removing them, tossing them to the side.

The whispers were louder here, always on the edge of his hearing, always ready to tear into his mental defenses and rip whatever piece of himself he had regained and destroy it. Spock's vision was blurry; it had been since the melds, but for some reason that didn't matter. On the edge of his vision there was always movement, always something was reaching out to grab him. To grab them, tear into them and destroy them, and he could see them coming.

He was losing himself.

He didn't want to lose himself; he had lost everything else. Yet he could feel himself slipping away to something. Something he couldn't see, something he couldn't understand, but something that was always there at the edge of his consciousness, and it was destroying him.

Spock took a breath and looked around at his surroundings, trying to focus on the parts of his personality and understanding that were untainted by whatever it was that had taken over. He was in a wide empty foyer; there were no paintings on the walls, merely stained places where there had once been paintings hung, the tables had been removed, everything was empty, but the main thing that caught his attention was when he looked up. He didn't see the source of the light that had cut off almost as soon as he entered, instead seeing that the entire ceiling had been torn off, and it was snowing again.

Spock stared up into it, letting it fall onto his face, pulling his hat off and spreading his arms out, trying to let the small stings from the cold flakes burn into his mind. Accepting the cold, the way it bit into his uncovered ears and nose. He bit his lip until it bled, and slowly looked back down, not paying attention to the dirt stained foyer and instead focusing on finding a way up there. Something told him it was a good idea, and unfortunately that meant that it was likely not coming from inside himself. The only problem was, he couldn't think of a better idea.

Spock moved quietly; towards the only door, a large black rectangle that seemed more foreboding than everything he had yet encountered. He didn't need the flashlight to see it; it was burned into his retinas. He reached out and slowly pushed the door open, revealing another wide empty room, only this time there were bodies. They were huddled amongst each other, curled up tight, dressed in warm clothes that had faded and shredded over time. They had frozen to death.

The other door was right past this room of bodies, this room of failures. They had arrived too late. Everyone in this colony, everyone in this town was dead. Spock moved quietly, he knew there would likely be something that moved, but so far his communicator was silent and that whispering inside his head was quiet. He needed to get to that door.

He took a few steps into the room, and then there was a rolling of quiet static from his communicator. He froze, waiting, watching. There was a moment of complete and total silence, and then a loud crack split the air. Another followed, and then another. Even if the sound was new, the way the things began twisting up and staring at him through rotting and decomposing eyes told him exactly what it was. He ran.

Fingers reached out to grab him, voices called out, shouting accusations and pronouncements of failure, of death. He was tripped, and went down flat, skidding along the ground. Yet the hands that he thought would follow didn't come. He slowly pushed himself upright and froze. They didn't move.

Dead flesh stared at him, their lack of movement eerie. They stood to either side of him, their posture and stance like something of an honor guard, but for what he wasn't sure. He dearly hoped it wasn't him. He took a slow step forward, still unable to focus on much aside from getting to that door. He had found a reason to stop listening to the voices, but they were blotting him out.

Spock took another stumbling step, tensing when one of them reached out, but halted close to touching him. His eyes shifted to that one and took another step, the brown orbs drifting to another as that one reached out. He halted completely in the middle of the room, slowly turning to look at them all, lined up, one after another, staring at him with bleeding sockets, the ice melting and turning to blood and gore as it decomposed rapidly.

They didn't move, didn't shift, and simply stared back, the two who had reached out to him letting their arms fall limp.

Spock took in a breath, and began walking again. The static continued crackling, the sound a backdrop for the strange atmosphere he was standing in, feeling strangely like he was in limbo between the moment when he didn't have to run, and the moment when they attacked. But they didn't move. He made it to the door; reaching his hand out he closed it around the knob, ears pricked for any sounds of movement. He pushed the door open and looked up at a long flight of stairs.

Turning around Spock was met with the sight of each and every one of the things standing directly behind him, still not moving, still just staring. He backed onto the first step, and pulled the door closed. There was a moment of silence, and then the door shook. Spock didn't move, eyes focused on it, waiting for a sign of what was happening. There was a quiet roar, a moment of complete and total cacophony, and then all went still.

He opened the door, and looked out into nothing.

Blackness encroached on his vision, not even the sort of blackness that he was used to on Vulcan which had had no moon…when it had existed. He was staring into black, and there was nothing to see. He closed the door quietly. There was no way back, only forward, up the stairs. Into whatever place had been prepared for him to see. He had realized the fact that there is something that has been leading their actions. He does not know precisely what it is, but he knows it is there. He also knows that it seems to flow and respond towards them, more specifically, what's inside them.

Emotions, fears, traumas… This place feeds off of them, and then sends them back at them, tearing down defenses against things that were meant to be buried. Meant to stay hidden.

He never wanted to think about his life on Vulcan. He never wanted to think about where he stood with that race. He never wanted to think about the 'feelings', the honest-to-God '_**feelings**_' that had been incurred at the sight of his planet imploding. Yet here he was, both things torn to the fore of his mind and put on display for two others to see. When they had been there. When they had been together.

He had not told them of how he came to be captured. Had not told them exactly what had been done to him. He remembered though. It was painted across his mind, and now that he was alone it was almost impossible not to dwell on it. The stairs continued, up and around, a spiral staircase that he couldn't see the top of. All he knew was he had to keep climbing.

And with every step, the scene replayed. He had been running from one horror, only to encounter another, swarms of them. Strange, shapely nurses with no faces. He hadn't been able to stop without skidding or falling, the snow was that deep and that treacherous. He had thrown his motion back and stood facing a creature he knew hadn't been after him. But that didn't stop him from backing away, directly into the throng. He had felt a needle enter his neck, a sudden rush of chemical entering his bloodstream, and then blackness had consumed him.

He remembered being cold when he had come to. So cold, it bit into his skin and his bones. He had already begun to lose feeling in his extremities, but he still felt a cloth resting along and over his pelvis that ended just under his upper thighs. Everything else was gone. Boots to hat, he had been stripped.

He could smell copper.

Then he noticed a dirty light filtering through his closed lids, and shadows moving along it. Moments of blackness against the green of his blood. There had been a voice. Or…something like a voice. Only he didn't so much hear it as feel it. Pounding into his skull.

He hadn't been able to understand what it was saying, but he had understood its meaning. His eyes had flickered open at a very strong prodding, and he stared up at the bare bulb of a light hanging from the ceiling, shining down on him. He couldn't move his arms or his legs; his arms had been yanked over his head and his legs had been spread and locked into position. One of the nurses was hovering over him, her faceless head tilted down and giving him the impression that she was staring at him. It was impossible, but she seemed to anyway.

He could just see something moving out of the corner of his eye and turned his head slightly to look; once he saw what it was he wished he hadn't. Several more stood there, scalpels and needles held in bandaged hands, but what drew his attention mainly was the tank of green viscous liquid next to him. He recognized that liquid. He recognized that smell. One of them bumped it, causing a splash, and droplets of green spattered across his face and chest. He didn't flinch, but he wanted to. He wanted to get away, he wanted to run. He could do neither.

The nurse hovering over him reached a hand down, her movements jerky, and rested one finger on one of the droplets of blood on his chest. Spock's mind was assaulted with the contact a feeling of despair seeping into his mind. She drew the bead of blood up in a line that connected with another droplet, and continued. Tracing patterns on his skin that soon led up to his face. He had a moment to slam all his mental walls down before her fingers found his meld points.

His resistance was futile. He struggled, arching against the bed, trying to get away from her fingers, trying to get away from her mind, gritting his teeth; all the while his mind fought in vain. She was through.

He felt her filling him with her thoughts, and suddenly, that wasn't the only thing filling him. Something had been inserted down his throat when he had been concentrating on keeping her out, and a feeling of rushing liquid and warmth and a taste that turned his stomach was dripping down the sides of the tube. The smell of copper was unmistakable, and so was the feeling of overindulgence.

"_You drank the blood of innocents. You destroyed them all. It was your fault. It was yours. The fault of a useless half-breed who shouldn't have been born…" _

It echoed inside his mind and out of it, constantly, never ending.

He could say nothing; he could not tell her otherwise, he could not convince himself otherwise. His mind was not his. The smell of copper got stronger, and suddenly it was on him, pouring over him like a fountain, and he shuddered, arched, tried to spit the tube out, do anything. Still, nothing, nothing but pain, nothing but the sticky feeling of blood covering him, nothing but her voice screaming at him, telling him it was his fault.

"_You are covered in the blood of your people…"_

He fell into the dark with those words in his mind and heart, the blood of his people covering him and in him.

He was _guilty_.

Now he stood in front of a door. Large, black, heavy, and covered with chains and spikes.

Spock did not want to go in.

But once again his movements and decisions were made for him. His fingers stretched out, grasping the handle, right under a spike. He couldn't stop himself from turning it. A gash was torn into his hand, but he pushed the door open anyway.

Spock stood on the open rooftop, a peak of stone in a sea of darkness. He moved forward quietly, breath coming in great puffs of moisture, drops of green blood from his hand falling onto snow covered concrete. He took a step, and then another. Shadows continued dancing across his vision, hands reaching to grasp him and pull him from this tenuous reality.

He didn't know what they would pull him into. He had no desire to find out; in fact, his whole body shuddered at the thought of what it could be, something he couldn't control, something he couldn't stop from doing. He was able to control less and less of himself.

And it _terrified_ him.

The door swung shut; the scenery changed. There were walls all around him; he was trapped in a wide towering room with light shining in on either side, but none in the space he was standing in. There was a small table to the right of him; on it was placed a revolver. It was shiny and seemed to be new, and in this place of rust and grime, that was something to consider.

Spock was not surprised. He simply stood still and waited for whatever would happen.

"Spock?" A voice. Not just any voice, but a voice that had haunted his dreams and memories for longer than he cared to remember. He stiffened, unwilling to turn, unwilling to face whatever perversion this place had visited on the owner of that voice.

"Spock, look at me, Spock…please?"

He didn't move, eyes focused straight ahead, afraid of what he would see should he turn his head. The feeling came back. The feeling of being controlled, the feeling of being gripped by something else and forced into its will. That feeling was making him turn around.

He strained against it, exerting his will and mental barriers. He could do nothing.

Spock finally faced the origin of the voice, happy that for a time it was in shadow. "You've grown so much, Spock…"

He didn't respond. He didn't want to respond. What was talking did not live. Had not lived in two years. But that voice had haunted his dreams.

"Spock, I can't tell you how much I've wanted to see you again, how much I've wanted to hold you to me…and Spock… Now I can. Now you're here. I've waited so long."

He forced himself to take a step back. Eyes locked on that patch of darkness right outside the ring of light that surrounded him. There was rustling behind him, and he turned to look, only to realize his mistake when it was too late. He jerked back, his head whipping around, and his eyes immediately locked onto a woman standing in the light directly in front of him.

She was smiling softly, dressed in the same outfit he remembered her wearing; she looked so real he could touch her, but he didn't trust his eyes any more.

Spock jolted, falling over backwards, half of him in the light, half of him out. He looked up into those eyes that had filled his dreams and felt nothing but terror. Something touched him, and he jerked, eyes flickering over to see a tentacle of black just inches from him. He followed that tentacle into the darkness at the base of her dress.

"Spock…don't do this. Don't be afraid…please? I love you, Spock. You've grown up so much. You've gotten to be so handsome. I didn't get a chance to tell you that last time I saw you…"

His voice was caught in the back of his throat. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think…

The one in possession of the tentacle moved closer into the darkness that spilled over his lower half, leaning down just enough so he could see just the smallest slit of skin and the several sharp, twisted teeth. He leaned back, farther away. What had been beautiful eyes were red glowing things in the dark.

"Please…do not do this to me, not her. Please, do not taint her…do not take the only things I have left and replace them with this…Please…" He was begging, whispering, pleading with a town, or a being, or anything that could cause it to go away. That would take her away and leave his memories of her in peace.

She seemed to stiffen, straightening much higher than Spock remembered, towering over him, and always those red eyes bored into him.

A hand reached out, caressing his cheek. "I really hoped that things would be better, Spock. But what could a mother expect from a child that was unable to tell her she was loved? You ruined me, Spock… You hurt me so much, Spock. You hurt me so much. You shunned me, rejected me. You let me die…"

He scooted farther away, his body beginning to tremble, and then he heard the sound of miserable tears coming from the blackness on the edges of his vision. He turned to look, watching as a long tentacle of dark creeped its way out of the blackness, a curled up form clutched inside it. Another tentacle raised as well, another body clutched inside it. They were pulled into the light, and Spock almost gasped.

Jim looked shattered; his eyes were half lidded, and his mouth was slack. His mind was lost in its own world of loneliness and desperation.

Bones was weeping bitterly and curled up tighter against the light.

"Captain…Doctor!" He shouted before he could help himself.

The form in the center drew up. "So, we have replacements…"

"They are not," he said before he could stop himself. But his voice seemed to snap them both out of whatever stupor they had been in.

They twitched, Bones' hands moving up to wipe at his face desperately, trying to clear the tears and the remains of dust. Jim blinked, eyes starting to focus, and then slowly peered down, noticing Bones, noticing Spock, and then noticing the thing that held them.

"No?" the perversion of Lady Amanda asked quietly in a half-purr. Jim found himself raised up until he was looking into a pair of red eyes that glowed. He could see his reflection in them. Wide-eyed and trembling.

"I believe they are. Replacements for the feeling of family that you never had in the first place," she whispered.

Bones blinked, realized what he was looking at and tensed. He didn't want to know about this, he didn't want to know what kind of thoughts Spock had entertained in his heart and mind for as long as he could remember.

"Please…" Spock's voice was soft, broken, making the two clutched tight in the tentacles tense.

"What's wrong, Spock? Don't like the truth?" Her voice was changing, shifting like her form. He could no longer recognize her, but that didn't matter. "Don't like hearing that you were always a second-class excuse for a son, a second-class excuse for a Vulcan?"

Spock flinched and backed away further. He was slipping. His mind was slipping. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe.

Jim watched as Spock struggled against words that had repeated in his consciousness for years, for as long as he was young and tried to speak, but found his mouth covered by more tentacles. His eyes drifted away from the sight of his First Officer and landed on Bones as he thrashed in the tentacles' hold, his own mouth covered. He wasn't surprised that his volatile friend had been attempting to shout exactly what he thought of what that Amanda clone was saying.

But it was then that they realized what Spock was backing up to - table, and on that table a gun, and they realized exactly what was meant to happen.

They tensed, trying to shout louder, trying to stop him from moving, trying to get him to realize how his mother had never thought that about him. But when they realized that everything she said were words that Spock had replayed in his mind over and over again, they felt like screaming.

Her words continued, a strange echoing quality deep in them, and for some reason they felt her words eating into their minds, even though they had never known her. But they knew Spock. They knew how much it was hurting him, how much of himself he was losing. How much it was killing him.

The whispers were joining her voice; they struggled harder, but there was nothing they could do… They watched in horror as Spock finally backed into the table, the force from it sending the revolver clattering to the ground next to him, and then they heard what she was saying.

"Spock, you failed everyone. Failed everything from saving your mother to your relationship…" They didn't know about Nyota. "What right do you have to continue to exist when others that were better than you could ever hope to be are dead? Spock…you shouldn't be alive, and you know it."

Spock's mind was not his own, his thoughts were not his own, and his hands as they held the revolver were not his own. He brought his trembling hands up, pulling the hammer back until it clicked into place. His eyes were wide and bright, the pupils dilated until his seemed almost black, and still his hand raised it up to his temple, resting it there quietly.

They were so busy watching Spock as he trembled, his mind infused with thoughts and images not of his choosing that they didn't notice where they were until they saw two glowing red eyes staring at them, wider and larger than they had been before.

Then they saw the mouth and the teeth, elongated, round and gaping. They were going to die. She was going to eat them alive, and they couldn't do anything about it. Their eyes flicked back to Spock, watching as he pressed the revolver against his temple in despair. They were all going to die. Their eyes flicked back into the stretched-out-of-shape face of Lady Amanda, the tentacles surrounding them and flicking through the air, making them shudder as they brushed them.

Her mouth opened wider, large razorblade-sharp black teeth ready to slice down on them, and they had one last moment to feel despair and true terror before the sound of a gun went off. Everything froze, and they gave a sob of fear, realizing what had happened.

Then the tentacles started slackening. They watched in amazement as the face in front of them withered, and suddenly they were falling. They collapsed onto the ground, wide eyed and bruised, watching as the woman landed in the light, her form changing as she did so.

They turned their heads quietly, locking on Spock as he sat there sprawled, his eyes wide, and the revolver pointing where they had been, the end of the barrel still lightly smoking. He didn't move for all of a minute, before slowly but surely sagging down, his eyes resting on the form of his suddenly-human mother.

She was bleeding from a shot to the head. Her face stuck in a peaceful expression, her body crumpled and small. She looked innocent, she looked pure. She was as he had always remembered her to be. Only she would never move again.

The gun fell to the ground with a clatter, as Spock bent forward over himself, mind and body reeling. Everything was wrong. His head came to rest in his hands as he curled, trying to blot out what he had done, trying to blot out the words. When a low keening began reverberating around the room he had no idea of what it was. Then he realized that it came from his own throat, that his shoulders were shaking, that his hands were wet with tears. Tears from his human eyes, Amanda's eyes.

Two hands landed on his shoulders and he froze, but then whole bodies joined the hands, burying heads in the juncture between shoulder and neck, ignoring the cold of his ears and skin that was unused to such weather and temperatures, wrapping arms around him, forcing themselves into his space, forcing themselves into his pain. They were all weeping.

Every thought was touched with despair; every thought was touched with pain.

A swirl of pain and fear and death sweeping over every thought as they just sobbed and screamed their pain. Trying to bury it in the despair of another.

Spock's mind was his for the first time since the meld, and he found that he didn't want it. It was too chaotic. Everything hurt, everything ached. Tears fell down his face; his head rested in the crook between his captain and the doctor's shoulders, sobbing, weakly keening and whimpering. Jim rubbed at his back, and the three of them clutched at each other.

Bones was the first one who noticed the change. There was a breeze wafting over him, and the air was no longer as chill. He sniffed, slowly removing his head from that crook, looking around him with squinting eyes.

There were surroundings. They were sitting on top of a building; he noticed with irony that it was the Town Hall they had been so focused on getting to. Seems that really was the way out. The snow had stopped falling and the clouds were parting slowly. The other two men raised their heads curiously, looking up at the light that peeked out of the parting clouds, two pairs of eyes bloodshot red, the other set green.

Jim sniffed, wiping his eyes and face on his coat sleeve and slowly standing up, watching as the sun rose over a quiet morning. The sounds of birds chirping made the others blink, and they slowly stood up to join Jim, watching in shock as small flitting birds flew up from the forest, chirping merrily.

"What the hell is going on here?" Bones asked softly.

But before the other two could answer they could hear something else, something that made them blink, something that made their hearts swell with fear.

"Spock?" The half-Vulcan jerked around to stare, only to nearly fall limp. There in front of him was his mother, only this time how she should have been.

"Mother?" He asked softly, taking a small step forward. She covered her mouth, choking back a sob, and Spock automatically took her into his arms.

Jim's ears were filled with the sound of children laughing, and he turned to watch as several children that he thought he would never see again ran to him, laughing and whole. They tackled him to the ground, hugging him tight, and he burst into happy tears of joy, arms wrapping around them all and shouting and laughing in concert to their own.

Bones smiled, watching his friends and feeling the joy radiating off of the two of them, as they were given one last chance.

"Mother…" Spock's voice was quiet, pressed on her shoulder. "I never told you, but I must… I love you, Mother."

"I know you do, Spock. I've always known. I have to go now, but Spock, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, you will always have a proud mother." They hugged tighter, and he let go, watching as she faded along with the rest.

They looked at each other. "What was that all about?"

"I don't know, but I don't think you should complain," Bones said with a small smile. Then they heard something, something that surprised and startled them, but then something that made their hearts leap.

"Cap…tain, ca…you…us?" Crackling from their communicators, and in the crackle, the sound of Scotty's voice. Broken up, but there. Jim pulled his communicator up to his mouth.

"Scotty! Scotty, can you hear me?"

"Capt…ld…sig…" There was a moment, and then finally, "Captain! Captain, can ye hear me?"

"SCOTTY! Oh, Scotty, I can't even begin to tell you how good it is to hear your voice!" Jim shouted out, clutching his communicator, the other two crowding closer, Bones laughing joyously, and Spock allowed him to hug him. "Scotty, can you beam us up?"

"I sure can, Captain. Jus' gimme one momen'…"

They took one last look around at the sun-kissed town and felt the tingle of beam-up. Bones had never been happier.


	10. Endings

As soon as the three of them felt the solid floor of the _Enterprise_ beneath their feet, Bones and Jim fell to the ground, laughing and shouting for joy; Spock simply sat, looking around at the lights around him and listening to the roar of the ship under and around him. Scotty and the bridge crew watched this with worry, eyes narrowed as they tried to figure out what the three of them could have encountered in order to make them act like that. That was when they noticed them. Jim and McCoy jumped up, running over to them and hugged each of them tightly in turn, laughing the entire time.

"Scotty! Oh God, Scotty! Sulu! Chekov! Uhura! We never thought we'd see you again!"

"Captain? Doctor?

"It is good to see you again…" Spock said softly, brown eyes bright. The three of them looked at each other before tearing their winter costumes off, leaving them in their partially-sodden, sweaty uniforms.

"Captain, what happened?" That voice drew their attention automatically, and the three of them turned to regard two pale faced security officers that they thought they would never see again.

"Mathews? Greare?" Jim asked softly, turning to look at the two security officers that had been dragged away from them. "You're alive? What happened? We thought you were dead!"

"We thought the same of you three, sirs; it's lucky for you that the planet wouldn't let us out of orbit and that Scotty over there wasn't about to leave without you. As for what happened… I couldn't tell you, sir…" Greare answered, blushing slightly. "I sort of fainted after a few seconds; Mathews did the same… But you, sir, what happened to you three?"

The three of them stiffened, looking at each other quietly and then turned back to the Ensign. "You don't want to know, but it was terrible, Greare… It was terrible."

As far as the bridge crew, Scotty, and the ensigns knew, that was the end of it. Their heads of command had been pulled into something they weren't interested in talking about. Something that hurt them all and something they put behind them swiftly.

The three of them had been unable to find a reason for the town, for finding out what it wanted, why they had been called, but they weren't all that sure they wanted to know. There was no being that they could understand, no force, just a town.

Next moment they had been giving orders to take them out of orbit, and they had all gone their separate ways, ordering the snow gear burnt as they went to get showered and dressed. McCoy scrubbed and scrubbed the blood and grit away, rubbing it out of his hair and watching as it swirled down the drain, happy to see it go. Jim and Spock shared a bathroom, so took turns, Jim going first as Spock spent time meditating, replacing and checking each and every mental layer that had been torn and building them up, stronger than they had been.

Now that he knew the weak spots, he could work to cover them up.

When he opened his eyes, Jim was sitting quietly in front of him, hair dripping and dressed in a clean uniform. Jim gave him a soft smile once he saw that he had his attention and gave a nod. "Your turn."

"Thank you, Jim…" Spock inclined his head, just the tiniest hint of a smile tilting a corner of his mouth, declining to mention the fact that his captain was stating the obvious. He stood up and moved to the head.

"Spock…" The half-Vulcan paused in the doorway. "Um…this is going to sound odd…but do you mind if I stay here tonight? I, uh…there's these…videos in my room, you see…and I can't…find them all, and it's just… I don't really want to be alone. Not right now."

Spock paused, blinked at him and inclined his head. "No trouble, Jim. Would you like to invite the Doctor as well?"

"You wouldn't mind?"

"It is as you have said, Jim. No one really wants to be alone at this time." With that he entered the head after grabbing a robe that Jim recognized as Vulcan in design, likely his off-duty wear. McCoy had put them on advised medical leave for a few days to recover. As Jim made his report, he hoped that the Brass would agree with them.

Back in his room, McCoy rested his head in his hands in front of his console, waiting for a reply that might or might not come. When he had explained the situation to Uhura, with as few descriptions as possible, she had understood immediately and agreed. When something finally picked up it was basically an answering machine. Bones sighed, but knew he had reached his daughter's personal phone and decided to chance it.

"Jo….Jo, it's your dad. I know I haven't talked to you in a while, honey… It's just… It's been hard. When yer mom and I broke up…it was never about you. It was _never_ about you. I've always loved you, Jo, yer my little girl, and your mom and I broke up because of…us. The both of us, your mom and I. We had problems we couldn't overcome, and I left like a coward because I couldn't stand being around her. You…you never entered my mind. I love you, Jo. I always will. I'm so sorry things didn't work out between your mother and I. I wish I could be there, see you grow up. You're going to be a heartbreaker when you get older, you know… I'm rambling. I'm sorry. It's just…"

"Daddy?" McCoy straightened in his chair, turning to look at the view screen and looking at the small, brown haired girl staring at him, her eyes wide and her hands covering her mouth. McCoy turned to look at her directly, eyes welling up at the sight of her.

"Oh, God, Jo…. I'm so sorry."

Joanna McCoy laughed and tried to hug her monitor in futile joy at seeing him. "Daddy, you called! I thought you had forgotten about me, Daddy…"

"I could never forget about you… Jo…never." If he found that he wanted to hug his own monitor he didn't say, simply stared at her with moist eyes. "It's so good to see you. You've gotten so big."

Joanna laughed, and father and daughter talked long into the night.

But when Joanna hung up, and McCoy was left alone in the darkness of his quarters he felt a sliver of unease slowly creeping up his spine. He stood up and blinked when Uhura contacted him. "Sorry, Doctor, but Jim requested that I let you know that you could go to Spock's quarters when you were done," she summarized quietly.

McCoy sighed, pushing the button to reply. "Thank you, Uhura…"

"It's no problem, I'm glad to be of assistance."

With that McCoy grabbed his sleep clothes and left to Spock's quarters. He came in during a rather animated tale by Jim, his arms waving over his head and his voice rising and falling. When they noticed McCoy the both of them turned around to smile at him on one side, while the other inclined his head in recognition. Bones looked down and smirked at the sight of the multiple pillows and blankets strewn about the floor of the Vulcan-warm room, and the bowls of food laid out.

"This a sleepover?"

"Yep. Isn't it great?" Jim asked, throwing his arms over head, smirking sarcastically; when Bones opened his mouth to snark, Jim cut in with a quiet, "Spock's never had one."

McCoy's mouth clicked shut, and he nodded. "Well. Guess we'll have to fix that now, won't we? Normally there's movies brought to this thing. Do we have anything?" he asked, smirking back, the two of them amused beyond belief at the thought of having a sleepover of all things.

Jim pointed to a projector at the back corner, giving him a wide smile. "Loads. Usually the movie genre of choice for these things are scary movies, Mr. Spock, but considering recent events… I think it's safe to say we could all agree on a comedy?"

"I don't know, Jim… I don't think I'm going to find any horror movie as jarring as I used to, now that I've been in one…" McCoy placed his hands behind his head and leaned back onto Spock's bed, expression mildly amused. Spock was watching the both of them in confusion.

"Perhaps I am mistaken, but I thought that 'sleepovers' were usually events held by teenage girls…"

The two of them looked at each other and burst out laughing. "Well, if you want to we can possibly find a way to paint your nails."

Spock straightened up. "That will not be necessary."

The both of them cracked up laughing. "You're right, Spock, it is, but I think a little randomness would be beneficial after that shit we just got dragged through, so… yeah, sleepover's our best bet. You know…keep the monsters away with just a bit of humor… So, comedies, yes or no? Or do we want an action movie?"

They continued discussing movie genres and the pros and cons of each, Spock placing his two cents in where he deemed it appropriate.

When they finally couldn't keep their eyes open and were sleepily watching the ending of a comedy that none of them found particularly funny, Jim began slowly whispering to his two companions stories about Tarsus IV. The two of them listened quietly, slowly waking up with every word. When he finally trailed off, they sat there quietly, not saying a word, until Spock began whispering quietly, speaking of his mother, his planet, speaking of what it felt like and what his life had been like. They gave him their undivided attention, and finally he tapered off. Bones finally began telling the both of them about his conversation with Joanna.

When they were finally done they lay in silence, quietly contemplating everything that had happened until they couldn't keep their eyes open.

They might never understand why the Town turned in such a manner, what exactly happened to those people, why the officer was spared…although they had a theory to that. She had survived the storm that had torn the roof off of the Town Hall, killing all the people that she was supposed to help save, the others in her jurisdiction dying as well. She was trapped in a town that tested her, left her alone for years, looking for survivors that didn't exist - her test, her failure, her pain. The agony of one person was enough to shift the entire area, make it feed off of any pain and despair that came in from others. They had been its main course. It was not a particularly encouraging thought, but it didn't change what it was.

It was a night to remember, even if they had nightmares every time they fell asleep. It was worth it just to wake up and know that they had friends who knew more about them than anyone else would ever hope to know. But the best part about that was they didn't care; they still were there when the other woke up, ready with grumbling 'we're safe', 'everything's alright', 'we're still here'.

It was a feeling that seeped into their bones and drove deep in their hearts.

Jim never was able to find the last of his porn stash, and the first time Uhura intercepted a communication and placed it on speaker only to have the signal break up and come out as static, the three of them that had been in the Town jolted to attention, McCoy falling off the railing he was sitting on and the other two standing up. The rest of the bridge crew had stared at them, and they slowly sat down, trying to play it off as nothing.

It hadn't worked, and they had been forced to laugh. Except for Spock, but Jim and Bones had recognized the slight tic at the corner of his mouth. He had been laughing just as hard, and it was a privilege to be let in so deep, no matter the cost; they would always have each other.


End file.
